I always feel I'm an amateur. I don't most of the time know what I'm doing.
There is nothing in which men more deceive themselves than in what they call zeal.
One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.
Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.
Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.
I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter.
When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.
I'm a person who's coming New York because of the magnetism of the people. I'm not coming because of expectations. I'm coming here because it's a very natural way of sharing. That's the reason. And also friends - I love to be with people I can't meet in Warsaw.
There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.
Satan will try to use our memory of any previous guilt to lure us back. . . We must be ever vigilant to avoid his enticements
Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day.