Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

Our first and last love is self-love.

The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

If you violate laws of God, you're a sinner.If you violate laws of men, you're a criminal.If you violate your own laws, you're pathetic.

The day we stop learning is the day we die.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

A boy, by the age of 3 years, senses that his destiny is to be a man, so he watches his father particularly-his interests, manner, speech, pleasures, his attitude toward work.

I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days.

What's important is how you deal with fear. I face it head-on, but I'm not too proud to admit that I do get afraid sometimes.

Baddies always do get the best lines, that's the honest truth.

The life of pleasure breeds boredom. The life of duty breeds resentment.

The main question raised by the thriller is not what kind of world we live in, or what reality is like, but what it has done to us.

You know when civilization began? With the invention of the mirror.