The verdict on Prince Metternich will soon be out: An excellent diplomat and a bad politician.

I look around me and nowhere do I see a stamp of disapproval with which nature marked a woman's candid brow.

Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.

The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the rule, and the educated person the exception.

History is the zoology of the human race.

I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.

The character of the crowds is made up of mimicry and hostility.

Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.

Someone who is reluctant to say what he needs to say, often ends up doing so with an insolence whose crassness is proportionate tohis fear, once he gathers the necessary courage.

Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.

A woman's passion is not the measure of a man's love.

Knowledge can never imprison you, but you can be captive to your ignorance.

People and institutions that refuse to admit error eventually discredit themselves.

That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.

Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being.

I know that some actors and directors like to have intensity on set. I don't, particularly. Certainly, if they want that, that's fine, but I can't work like that.

The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us. When the world seems familiar, when one has got used to existence, one has become an adult.

Be pupils of the masses as well as their teachers.

books are brain food. If every American would purchase the equivalent of his weight in books each year, this country would be a different place.

I waited a long time out in the world before I gave myself permission to fail. Please don't even bother asking. Don't bother telling the world you are ready. Show it. Do it.

Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. Let him say not merely, "Christ is risen," but "I shall rise."