There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.

God bless us, every one!

and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!

[T]he wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile.

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when the Great Creator was a child himself.

... Any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness!

The air was filled with phantoms... and... the misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.

Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.

A society or culture which is disposed to view the world in Manichean terms will be more vulnerable to control by propaganda.

I woke up many mornings not knowing what I'd done the night before. I'm amazed I'm not dead.

Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.

There are moments where we don't understand the world we live in - where we don't understand our own lives, our sadness or our joy.

In French we have this word déclic. It's when you have, suddenly, a light shining and you say, "This is what I want to do."

I work under the assumption that, generally speaking, my taste and the taste of the Oscar voters are not one in the same.

Music is a universal language.

I have always been a sucker for the big, upbeat chorus.

In actual fact, the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music - all with love. In other words, create a magic world.

Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.