Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections.

The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice.

Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed.

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food

But to us, probability is the very guide of life.

Every man is to be considered in two capacities, the private and public; as designed to pursue his own interest, and likewise to contribute to the good of others.

Love of our neighbour, then, has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love, than hatred of our neighbour, or than love or hatred of anything else.

As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.

Happiness does not consist in self-love.

It is not at all incredible, that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind should contain many truths as yet undiscovered.

If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers...

It's easy to hide behind a smile, that's why it is so important to search instead inside the eyes.

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting

I never like to think of any character as being over. I'm always thinking of different ways of bringing them back.

The whole international community will be united in condemning what they have done.

Being a purely instrumental album, it makes a musical statement, not a religious one, and I hope that people can feel the emotion of the great melodies, even without the words.

I don't cry at books or movies. Ever. So imagine my shock and awe when I read 'The Time Traveler's Wife' for the second time, and I knew the ending, and I started to cry.

My fan following is intact. They only like to see me in movies, which I am still doing for them. I do not need to do any long interviews or chat shows.

The measure of a man is what happens when nothing works and you got the guts to go on.

Contradiction itself, far from always being a criterion of error, is sometimes a sign of truth.