It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting ‚All the Gods are bastards.‘

I think Pat Robertson is a terrific fellow.

A gentleman would be ashamed should his deeds not match his words.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I’m quite shy.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

You must reward the kind of behavior that you want.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

I gave ‚em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

Juvenile crime is not naturally born in the boy, but is largely due either to the spirit of adventure that is in him, to his own stupidity, or to his lack of discipline, according to the nature of the individual.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

Desire is the essence of a man.

I am not some goddess that dropped down from the sky to sing pop music; I am not some extra-incredible human person that needs to be told how wonderful they are all day and kissed.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all directions.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

People who eat with their mouth open should be punched in the face.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

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

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

I don’t do any vulgar movements.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

A creep is someone who claims he’s one thing but he’s actually another.

You have a nice personality, but not for a human being.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

In whatever adulation you get, there’s truth and there’s not truth. And wherever they dog you, and they say it was horrible – there’s truth and there’s not truth. It’s human nature to like to read the adulation more.

The skin of my character in ‚The Man Who Fell to Earth‘ was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.