Why seek to embarrass [the artist] with vanities foreign to his quietness? Know you not that certain sciences require the whole man, leaving no part of him at leisure for your trifles?

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

To make a perfume, take some rose water and wash your hands in it, then take a lavender flower and rub it with your palms, and you will achieve the desired effect

Being willing is not enough. We must do.

Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works.

Whatever you do in life, if you want to be creative and intelligent, and develop your brain, you must do everything with the awareness that everything, in some way, connects to everything else.

When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come.

When gossip starts, be deaf.

Yes I pay taxes... There are no ethics in the face of coercion, that is blaming the victim. Focus on the man with the gun, not the man in the crosshairs trying to survive.

The cutting of primeval forest and other disasters, fueled by the demands of growing human populations, are the overriding threat to biological diversity everywhere.

My first paid role was my first job out of drama school, which was Just William. It was a BBC TV show. I played Ethel.

The drama school was in Oxford - and it's funny to think of it, but in those days when I started out the University was nearly all male. And they certainly weren't mixed.

No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.

Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.

I found that inevitably you cannot fit everything that is in that book into what is inevitably going to go on screen.

By changing nothing, nothing changes.

I'm a comedian so I'm not waiting around for someone to write a part for me. I don't have to wait for somebody else to create my next job; I have the ability to basically write my own ticket.