Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

I will Basquiat the canvas of your body like a Broadway Junction wall…and Gordon Parks you for those dark midnights when your scent fades.

the lessons are best when the pain is worse

The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much / to you.

A painted landscape is always more beautiful than a real one, because there's more there. Everything is more sensual, and one takes refuge in its beauty.

War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests.

A dwelling should be not a retreat from space, but life in space.

My father, the practical joker, did not care for practical jokes on himself; he did not encourage the practice in me.

Most of the time, actors respond to the thing thats so far from who they are. We all want to play the serial killer and the ex-con.

The rate at which organizations learn may soon become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.

In the motive lies the good or ill.