Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

Sin is geographical.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

It’s funny; recently I’ve started to notice people’s impersonations of me, and it’s basically like a hyperactive child.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

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

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

I am a generous man, by nature, and far more trusting than I should be. Indeed. The real world is risky territory for people with generosity of spirit. Beware.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

Freedom is relative.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

One day it will be over, and I don’t care.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

I don’t know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I personally do not think I’m a great gift to the world. I’ve been very fortunate.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.