The effect of great and inevitable misfortune is to elevate those souls which it does not deprive of all virtue.

The world belongs to optimists; the pessimists are only spectators.

Modesty is a shining light; it prepares the mind to receive knowledge, and the heart for truth.

Do not be afraid of enthusiasm. You need it. You can do nothing effectively without it.

The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty

It is only after an unknown number of unrecorded labors, after a host of noble hearts have succumbed in discouragement, convinced that their cause is lost; it is only then that cause triumphs.

Common sense is the genius of mankind.

Nothing falsifies history more than logic.

If I had not smoked I should have been dead ten years ago.

A work of art is a confession.

When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.

Our thoughts will swim around and talk to us while we're sitting there, make fun of us, ignore us. But if you pay attention, if you don't look in the direction of your thoughts, you meditate.

Has there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints in the wilderness? Around them was not only the devil loose around them- but also the swine.

Some of you in this room support higher taxes. I welcome your enthusiasm and am glad to report that the IRS takes both money orders and checks.

When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.

Son, the phrase is self-contradictory; "sense" is never "common".