J. E. H. MacDonald Quotes

The day you stop loving your people, they're not your people anymore.

At this moment, God is watching your life and at some point in this trial, He will say enough. You don't need to falter.

It's not unlikely that God would lie that would be a matter of probability. It is impossible for God to lie.

I've been told I have an Irish temper, I know I have Scottish thrift, and, like the English, I love a good show.

The one thing I missed was never having children. It just wasn't in the cards, I guess.

I am not suited to the role of going around selling the life-can-be-beautiful idea. It can be, indeed. But you don't buy the concept from your friendly door-to-door lecture salesman.

In the morning I'm often anti-semantic.

It was both comforting and terrifying to go in to audition for 'The Girl in the Cafe,' as I'd worked with everyone in the room on 'State Of Play.'

I tend to get cast as a certain type of quiet, almost introverted person who's strong on the inside, but the characters are so very different I don't see it as any kind of typecasting.

L.A. is brilliant, but however long my trip is I'm always ready to leave. But New York I'm never quite happy to see the back of.

It's that TV thing. You can be in the biggest film of the year and it will still not have the kind of impact a TV series has. Once you're in people's living rooms, that's it. There's no hiding place.

It can get a bit boring working on accents.

I've done TV and I've done film, and I'm not snobby about it. It's about the project.

I'm so not a celebrity.

I love that thing on Amazon that you can go on and order a book, and you click on it and it says, 'You might also like,' or 'Other people who bought this have bought that.

If you cannot patiently bear correction, endeavor to avoid fault.

In love, first please the eye, then win the heart.

Few are more unhappy than those who have great ambition, but little energy to urge it into activity.

It is necessary to be tolerant, in order to be tolerated.

Proper respect to others is the most prudent rule of directing the measure of reverence due to ourselves.

A readiness to excuse some faults, shows a disposition to commit others.

Most men will go farther to give advice than to follow their own opinion.

During misfortunes, nothing aggravates our condition more, than to be esteemed deserving of them.

I've just seen really, really funny guys, and if I didn't know them, I wouldn't know they were funny from the television. I don't know what it does, it just sucks it away.

None seem to bear the imputation of supposed guilt with greater intolerance than such as are, on other occasions, obviously culpable of vice or crime.

They that are virtuous from principle may receive confidence in every capacity; but they that are so from custom or habit, are capable of trust only in matters of ordinary and settled occurrence.

In giving advice, aptitude is often less to be considered, than seasonableness.

A capacity for hating the object of desire is, perhaps, the best cure for love in cases of disappointment.

I had a show that people thought used a laugh track. It wasn't; it was the real audience going crazy after everything that resembled a joke, that they could technically call a joke.

I would love to stay at SNL forever. But you can't stay in the same place. People think you're a loser.

The soul is never perfectly secure from the influence of passion; the occasional tranquility she seems to enjoy, is rather relaxation than imperturbable triumph.

It's a very odd thing with Hollywood, where you do stand-up, you're good at it, then they go, "How would you like to be a horrible actor?" Then you say, "All right, that sounds good. I'll do that."

Generally I don't like traveling around saying the exact same thing. I don't think that's a very good thing to do with your life.

There hasn't been an original voice in stand-up since Sam Kinison.

There is a very prevalent tenet with youth, that good company is every thing desirable, and that bad is even better than none.

Whenever I do theaters, I don't like 'em. I don't think they're right for stand-up.

Love is an artful arrangement of artless pretensions, whereby we labor to appear innocent in what we desire to be most cunning.

The Rolling Stones reunited for a twenty-fifth anniversary tour last week. Keith Richards said that he's happy to continue to do what he's been doing for the past twenty-five years: cheating death.

Never raise expectations in others that you cannot realize: promise is less pleasing than disappointment is vexatious.

Laws, however divine in origin and institution, would be found of little coercion among men, were the administration of them not committed to mortals.

Jealousy seldom punishes with the severity it suffers.

I don't have to meet actors. I'm really blessed that I don't have to do all that horseshit.

I just like doing standup, that's all I'm interested in or good at.

We are often less grieved at disappointments than at ourselves for having said much concerning the certainty of our expectations.

You're used to a TV show, and TV is just made for TV shows. It's not made for live events.So anyways, I was resistant to it, but I did it anyway.

I hate fame. I hate being recognized, because I don't know how to talk to people.

When I was a kid, everybody that played golf was an old man. Until Tiger showed up, they weren't in very good shape.

The promises we break are usually such as we are most forward in making.

I've always been very averse to innuendo, especially sexual. I find it cowardly or something.

Stand-up has the best writers, because it's the hardest writing by a million miles.