The degree of genius necessary to please us is pretty nearly the same proportion that we ourselves have.

Truth is a torch which gleams in the fog but does not dispel it.

No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment.

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.

Education made us what we are.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it.

Genius is nothing but continued attention.

Virtue has many preachers, but few martyrs.

A man who believes that he eats his God we do not call mad; yet, a man who says he is Jesus Christ, we call mad.

Pleasure and pain are the only springs of action in man, and always will be.

My sister has mistaken me for a mushroom. She keeps me in the dark and feeds me shit.

So if the ties that bind ever do come looseTie them in a knot like a hangman's nooseCause I'll go to heaven or I'll go to hellBefore I'll see you with someone else.

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.

I don't think people were that interested in what I was doing for the most of the 1990s.

Texas does not, like any other region, simply have indigenous dishes. It proclaims them. It congratulates you, on your arrival, at having escaped from the slop pails of the other 49 states.

Places like New York are just too intense, too much about money, too much about ambition; it's all too superficial for me.

See him, the gentle Bible beast, / With lacquered hoofs and curling mane, / His wondering journey from the East / Half done, between the rock and plain.

He that discovers himself, till he hath made himself master of his desires, lays himself open to his own ruin, and makes himself prisoner to his own tongue.

I do not know why anyone would host an awards show. No matter how unbelievably well you do at it, the only thing that can happen is you get asked again to host an awards show.

The only power an actor has is the ability to say "no."