Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.
Night gives a black look to everything, whatever it may be.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.
The majority of men. . . are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and. . . are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
It simply comes down to this, Get Busy Living, or Get Busy Dying.
After Blood Simple, everybody thought I was from Texas. After Mississippi Burning, everybody thought I was from Mississippi and uneducated. After Fargo, everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant, and have blonde hair. I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be.
[quoting someone else] the American constitution is a document designed by geniuses to be eventually interpreted by idiots
Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.