There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

Love is the crowning grace of humanity.

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.

Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.

Man has not a greater enemy than himself.

It is better to will the good than to know the truth.

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.

Virtue is health, vice is sickness.

For though I am a body of this earth, my firm desire is born from the stars.

I decided that a story was anything that I made up that kept the reader turning the pages or watching, and did not leave the reader or the viewer feeling cheated at the end.

You are always talking about yourself and tennis and how you are feeling. I try to avoid it when I don't have to.

As much preparation as I had made for the old man Salieri, gestures and so on, the fact is after sitting for hours, your movements are kind of slow.

If you think well, you cook well.

Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury.

The appetites will rule if the mind is vacant.

It's better not to see than to see wrongly.

One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.

Postmodernism does not help us understand good art. It encourages art that can be easily understood and throws in something catchy to cover the loss of mystery.