We ought to love temperance for itself, and in obedience to God who has commanded it and chastity; but what I am forced to by catarrhs, or owe to the stone, is neither chastity nor temperance.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

Each person you meetis an aspect of yourself, clamoring for love.

Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.

Who will present pleasure refrain shall in time to come the more pleasure obtain.

Honestly, I am pretty passionate about avoiding failure!

Wouldn't it be a tragedy to get to the top of the ladder and find you placed it against the wrong wall?

I live my life through the prism of capitalism and physiological limits and eventualities.

Anger is one of the most intimate of emotions and to expose it to strangers is one of the most stupid and sickening things to do. Never get angry with strangers because they are strangers.

When I have time off, all I want to do is do nothing.

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.

As soon as you see 'Dame' in front of someone's name, you get nervous, but Dame Maggie Smith is the most wonderfully gentle woman I have ever met. She never had a bad word to say.