An actor's life is the shadow of a cloud, the echo of a sound, the memory of a dream, nothing come of nothing. The finest actor does not create, he is but a translator of another man's work.

I want to do everything in the world that can be done.

[On disagreeing with her husband about his slave-holding:] I cannot give my conscience into the keeping of another human being or submit the actions dictated by my conscience to their will.

What shall I do with all the days and hours That must be counted ere I see thy face? How shall I charm the interval that lowers Between this time and that sweet time of grace?

When marriage is what it ought to be, it is indeed the very happiest condition of existence.

... it's always determined characters who make the greatest fools.

Simplicity is a great element of good breeding.

I have been taking my daily walk round the island, and visited the sugar mill and the threshing mill again.

Carols of gladness ring from every tree.

They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.

[On John Brown:] The poor wretch is hanged, but from his grave a root of bitterness will spring, the fruit of which at no distant day may be disunion and civil war.

Believing in your standards for a square deal, even when there's no way to get it, is what allows you to create boundaries and take independent action.

Birds of a feather will flock together.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

But in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure.

Do portraits of people in familiar and typical attitudes, above all give to their face the same choice of expression that one gives to their body.

A journalist also needs to be disciplined, and so do I. I am, essentially, lazy. Without discipline I'd be just a mass of gummy bears on the sofa instead of on book tour with my eighth novel.

There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life - we are never bored.

What does Obama mean keep working on closing Gitmo? It's a broken promise. Obama said we were gonna close Gitmo the first day he was in office and it never happened.

If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em.

It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do.