In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought that the same cause should produce such opposite effects.

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?

The beginning is always today.

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!

You are my creator, but I am your master; Obey!

I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created.

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.

Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.

If you REALLY want to know what another person is like, notice how he or she treats the less fortunate or those without position or title.

Forever is composed of nows.

When a man losses faith he betrays a hero

It is a secret in the Oxford sense. You may tell it to only one person at a time.

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.

Enlightenment does not put an end to awareness. It puts an end to limited awareness. It doesn't necessarily put an end to incarnation. It puts an end to reincarnation.

The artist accepts the limitations of form, not with fear and dread, but as the starting point of creation.

I was certainly a child of the '60s, and I came out of that era, and as a young actor, I got cast as a lot of counterculture hippie types.

Art is a war - between ourselves and the forces of self-sabotage that would stop us from doing our work. The artist is a warrior.

And the commitment that I've been giving to the Australian people is that there'll be no surprises and no excuses under a Coalition government.