We are not greatly pleased that our friends should respect our good qualities if they venture to perceive our faults.

Lazy people are always anxious to be doing something.

We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves.

The shortness of life cannot dissuade us from its pleasures, nor console us for its pains.

The young suffer less from their own errors than from the cautiousness of the old.

You are not born for fame if you don't know the value of time.

The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught.

The art of pleasing is the art of deception.

Action makes more fortune than caution.

Courage is adversity's lamp.

Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.

There is no greater gift than realizing the constant presence of the Divine and His Absolute Power to create and restore all things.

Well, what was luck for if it was never to be tempted?

For me, philanthropic return on investment is about making the biggest impact possible on fellow human beings, regardless of country, race or religion.

We have to come back to something like ordinary language after all when we want to talk "about" mathematics!

I just don't want to be known as the actress who can sing. I want to be known as the singer who can act, too. It's great cross-promotion.

That's one good thing about the way life is, that no one can know you if you don't let them.

My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.

The joy that comes past hope and beyond expectation is like no other pleasure in extent.

I disapproved of the fact that the government here refused to adopt the few reforms that Gorbachev put over in the field of media and the field of culture.

Oh dear me, the Booker people don't like me. I don't care. I have been given an award for being taken not seriously, and I am very, very pleased about that.