There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

I wasn't exactly good with children. I wasn't bad with them, as such. I just wasn't around them much and, because of that, when I was, they freaked me out because I didn't know what to do with them.

For the casual viewer, Kurosawa’s films can be an exercise in endurance.

I'll have to as you say take a stand do something toward shaking up that system. ... Despair ... is too easy an out.

A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.

The indecisiveness and ambivalence so devastatingly described by both of Obama's previous secretaries of defense, Leon Panetta and Bob Gates, are already beginning to characterize the Syria campaign.

My life is in the art that I make, and I'm very happy with it.

Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism.

I support the recommendations made by the International Crisis Group. The primary responsibility is for Kosovo Albanians to demonstrate that their treatment of minorities is adequate.

Dum Spiro, spero- As long as I breathe, I hope.

Art is the conveyance of spirit by means of matter.