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

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Letters are something from you. It’s a different kind of intention than writing an e-mail.

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

It is better to be deceived by one’s friends than to deceive them.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

I have an answering machine in my car. It says, I’m home now. But leave a message and I’ll call when I’m out.

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.

Don’t judge other people. For example, if you want God’s anointing to be on you for parenting, you need to be careful not to criticize other parents.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.

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

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

Love is a state of being.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

I always wanted a family.

If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.

I try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.

A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

I don’t like to beat people down. They need to be lifted up.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

In assisting his ‚neighbour‘ every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

Never marry someone in hope that they’ll change later.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

There are always people always asking you for something. But I feel like I have a foundation. I have a supporting cast where it doesn’t bother me too much.

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

I think women are really good at making friends and not good at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily making friends. That’s a gross generalization, but I think it holds in many ways.

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

I know love is the answer.

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.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

Every relationship should eventually become a long-term relationship. Any director that I meet now isn’t just a director. He’s potentially a friend, and someone I can call to do a project that I want or that I have.

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.