We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.
If you do not rest on the good foundation of nature, you will labour with little honor and less profit.
He who never puts his trust in any man will never be deceived.
An artist who lacks the power of self-criticism accomplishes but little. It is good if your work stands higher than your own opinion of it; bad if it is on the same level. But it is a great disaster if your work stands lower than your judgment of it.
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain
Based on first-hand evidence of your own senses - the improved health and later ages at which acquaintances die nowadays as compared with the past; the material goods that we now possess; the speed at which information, entertainment, and we ourselves move freely throughout the world - it seems to me that a person must be literally deaf and blind not to perceive that humanity is in a much better state than ever before.
All my day is spent dealing with other people. When I come home I like it to be empty. The presence of others in my house kind of annoys me. I love coming home and shutting the doors. I feel brain dead. I'm relatively available, but not to live with.
I was a boy with one dream and one dream only: I wanted - no, strike that, I was desperate for - a room of my own. You see, in those days I shared a room with my little brother, Jesse, and it wasn't pretty. He was the Oscar to my Felix: messy, careless, and just a little bit sticky - exactly the way a kindergartner is supposed to be.
Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.