As the eye becomes blinded by fashion to positive deformity, so, through social conventionalism, the conscience becomes blinded to positive immorality.

In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

Extreme vanity sometimes hides under the garb of ultra modesty.

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man; youth never.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of mind, for the moment realizes itself.

All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the safe side and the just side of a question is the generous side and the merciful side.

As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.

All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny.

Nature and truth are one, and immutable, and inseparable as beauty and love.

To reason from analogy is often dangerous, but to illustrate by a fanciful analogy is sometimes a means by which we light an idea, as it were, into the understanding of another.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.

That kind of pursuit is not beneficial to mankind: art for self aggrandizement at the cost of love.

Failure is blessing wrapped in the clothing of curse.

If it weren‘t for Asperger‘s and obsessions there would be no Theory of Relativity, no Magic Flute, no Microsoft…and no Ghost Busters.

So many girls have become famous for literally nothing - other than falling out of clubs in shocking clothing or going out with a different person every week.

What great faith our Lord Jesus Christ asks of us - and how just that is. Do we not owe him such faith? It looks impossible to us, but Jesus is Master of the impossible.

I'm not a lukewarm European. I know that the German-French friendship is indispensable, no matter who the countries' leaders are.

Of men eternally dear! happy indeed If you have breathing-space From pain: blessed all the more If death should heal you of the pain you fear!

Courage is the enforcing virtue, the one that makes possible all the other virtues common to exceptional leaders: honesty, integrity, confidence, compassion and humility

The rehearsal period is so far away from the time when the scene will actually be shot that very little is remembered.

I think the world is in the mess it's in because we are spiritually ignorant.