A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats – and one always secretes too much jelly.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

I just got to feel that whoever I marry has some real regard for me.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I’m here.

A fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

People who work for me know that family comes first. And I’m fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don’t have to live two separate lives.

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

I think women love very hard. We love men. We just love with everything we have. And sometimes, I don’t know that that love is met with the type of dignity that we wish it would be met with.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.

Disagreement is something normal.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

Marriage is the death of hope.

I think the perfection of love is that it’s not perfect.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

In our home there was always prayer – aloud, proud and unapologetic.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

I’ve never been that much of a money guy. I’m more of a film guy, and most of the money I’ve made is in defense of trying to keep creative control of my movies.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

My mother raised me with God. We were poor financially, but we were rich spiritually.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

My folks ain’t graduated from high school or nothing like that, so we always had to struggle in the family – and I come from a big family.

I delayed my father’s funeral because of cricket.

When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you, and as soon as you act like you like them, they’re no longer interested.

I’ll be glad to reply to or dodge your questions, depending on what I think will help our election most.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.

The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

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.

Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

I’ve always regretted that I never was able to talk openly with my parents, especially with my father. I’ve heard and read so many things about my family that I can no longer believe anything; every relative I question has a completely different story from the last.

Oh, my mama was awesome. Very strict, overreligious, loved the Lord, loved rules. But she had to be that way because of where we were growing up, the neighborhood I was from.