In honorable dealing you should consider what you intended, not what you said or thought.

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due.

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.

Do FBI Agents and FBI directors have political beliefs? Sure they do. But they’re not supposed to act on them.

The more you know the less you need to say.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

No one ever doubts that I mean what I say. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

When it comes to gossip, I have to readily admit men are as guilty as women.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

The second time around, I’ll understand that, as a husband, my wife doesn’t care about my opinions. I just need to tell her the things that will continue to help me stack the brownie points.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way. My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I’m afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

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

Politics have no relation to morals.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

My wife doesn’t even want to spend 2 hours with me.

When anyone has the power to destroy the whole human race in a matter of hours, it becomes a moral issue. The church must speak out.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

When you have good friends you’ve been around, every time they talk, you don’t give them your full attention. You don’t look them in the eye and stop. Half the time, you’re listening, half the time, you are ignoring them.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Disagreement is something normal.

Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

Gravity must be caused by an Agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this Agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

I know what I do for my team and what my teammates expect of me on both ends of the floor.

I make friends faster and easier than journalists.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

I would never do a commercial if I thought it was offensive to anyone.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

I just think you ought to talk straight with your people.

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

To compromise simply means that you go a tiny bit below what you know is right.