We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.

What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!

It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.

Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.

No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.

There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.

Being famous is like a little bit of you is taken away and goes off and lives on its own and does what it wants... I wish it would do more interesting things!

It’s always better to sit on your dignity in private than to stand on it in public.

I love my kids so much. They teach me something every day. It always brings richness to my work, and even more in life. I feel lucky to be able to do both.

And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.

Reason is the life of the law.

Some people habitually wear sadness, like a garment, and think it a becoming grace. God loves a cheerful worshipper.

And what is 'art'? - a firestorm rushing through Time, arising from no visible source and conforming to no principles of logic or causality.

Personally I like to believe that all become honest, the millennium is round the corner!

If you're alone with nothing to do, the quality of your experience really plummets.

If I get two lines in the script, I somehow turn it into 20. I've got a bit of a bad habit of doing that, of just embellishing my little moment.