The beauty of me being on stage is I have a voice.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

The bat is not a toy, it’s a weapon. It gives me everything in life, which helps me to do everything on the field.

Actors know, with me they aren’t going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

I am not a second option person. It is that or nothing. If it is not the way I see it I prefer not to see it.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

I’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook, and I’m saying everything in there out loud.

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

There is no doubt that some plant food, such as oatmeal, is more economical than meat, and superior to it in regard to both mechanical and mental performance. Such food, moreover, taxes our digestive organs decidedly less, and, in making us more contented and sociable, produces an amount of good difficult to estimate.

I’m not really an actor, I’m a reactor; I’m a pitchman. That’s what I do best. Nobody can do it any better.

To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

I can’t even speak Hawaiian, but if you go there and listen to a Hawaiian song, you get captured because it’s so beautiful, like the melody is just gorgeous and you know Bob Marley is on the radio every single day. It’s very reggae-influenced down there. Basically, you haven’t been to paradise if you haven’t been to Hawaii.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

There is no index of character so sure as the voice.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

When I step forward on the floor, I have the confidence that I’m the best player playing that night and that I am the most prepared at what I need to be doing.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

Africa is probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.

I very rarely watch my own fashion shows, but the makeup for my Fall 2011 show was just brilliant.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

‚Leading man‘ just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

Men always want and love when women wear tight and fitted clothing, right? And you’re like, ‚Wow, she looks so beautiful.‘ And then you have men who dress like slobs, and you’re like, ‚What’s the deal with these big and baggy suits.‘ It’s pretty ridiculous.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

Confidence comes from discipline and training.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

Fashion is that thing that saved me from being sad.

Self-respect knows no considerations.

Someone said to me, ‚If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?‘ My answer was then and still is, ‚If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.‘

I never expect to lose. Even when I’m the underdog, I still prepare a victory speech.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

I promise you, I will have something on the Internet that is game-changing. I can’t lose.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

Oh yes. I’m an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought.

It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

I’m not a photographer, so I didn’t get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That’s the world that I’m moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.