Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it.
Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
The end result of kindness is that it draws people to you.
If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.
There is no scientific answer for success. You can't define it. You've simply got to live it and do it.
But if you can create an honorable livelihood, where you take your skills and use them and you earn a living from it, it gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to balance your life the way you want.
If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.
There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do.
A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.
Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life.
Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.
Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.
Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.
As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.
If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.
I had been a fan of Gene Wilder's for many years, but the first time I saw him in person, my heart fluttered - I was hooked. It felt like my life went from black and white to Technicolor.
I don't miss 'Saturday Night Live.' I feel less of a need for the fulfillment that performance used to give... I don't have to do everything right away. As long as I can walk and jump, I'll still perform, but I no longer feel such a compulsion.
Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.
When the journalists asked Gene, 'Why didn't you marry the beautiful girl in 'The Woman in Red'?' he would always reply, 'I did!'
We are not a typical family that goes for a movie on Sunday or has dinner together every night. But we are strong as the Great Wall of China. Nothing can stop us from supporting one another and enduring each other's pain as well.
Whenever I see a mirror, I just look at myself, or when I see my own reflection, I quickly take a look; I won't lie about that. But when I am in front of the camera, it's just the character, not me.
I may get married later or may never get married. But I want babies, so I'll have to get married. I want fat, cute babies. Every girl has to think about it at some point. For me, marriage is about family, and that's why I find it necessary. Till then, it's normal to have a partner and do your own thing.
My dad is too cute. Every morning, he sends me one motivational quote. I have a folder full of all his quotes.
Whatever you do, do with determination. You have one life to live; do your work with passion and give your best. Whether you want to be a chef, doctor, actor, or a mother, be passionate to get the best result.
Power is a tool, influence is a skill; one is a fist, the other a fingertip.
Photographer James Nachtwey has spent his professional life in the places people most want to avoid: war zones and refugee camps, the city flattened by an earthquake, the village swallowed by a flood, the farm hollowed out by famine.
Be bored and see where it takes you, because the imagination's dusty wilderness is worth crossing if you want to sculpt your soul.
We know what the birth of a revolution looks like: A student stands before a tank. A fruit seller sets himself on fire. A line of monks link arms in a human chain. Crowds surge, soldiers fire, gusts of rage pull down the monuments of tyrants, and maybe, sometimes, justice rises from the flames.
Summer is not obligatory. We can start an infernally hard jigsaw puzzle in June with the knowledge that, if there are enough rainy days, we may just finish it by Labor Day, but if not, there's no harm, no penalty. We may have better things to do.
But what is after all the happiness of mere power? There is a greater happiness possible than to be lord of heaven and earth; that is the happiness of being truly loved.
For this reason, to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete.
The great principle of Western society is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man - that is to say, the strongest and cleverest - is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most beautiful person.
There is one type of ideal woman very seldom described in poetry - the old maid, the woman whom sorrow or misfortune prevents from fulfilling her natural destiny.
To ancient Chinese fancy, the Milky Way was a luminous river, - the River of Heaven, - the Silver Stream.
Even the most understated ceremony involves a certain respect for ritual and pageantry. No one plays more of a significant role than the bride's attendants.
My bedroom is my sanctuary. It's like a refuge, and it's where I do a fair amount of designing - at least conceptually, if not literally.
My evening really begins when I take a long, hot bath. I light a candle, and I turn on the news and try to catch up. It's when I can breathe from the day to the night, and that means a lot to me.
Success isn't about the end result, it's about what you learn along the way.
I like working emotions that can take you beyond your life. And yet you have to resist them in order remain within your life. Otherwise, you're burned. I like that fight. It's more of a fight with yourself.
To leave in search of yourself, of your real needs, is easier when you don't have to justify yourself to anyone, when there are not too many people bestowing you their attention.
I have no fear of being less beautiful, I've always been afraid of not being beautiful.
You protect your being when you love yourself better. That's the secret.
Nothingness not being nothing, nothingness being emptiness.
I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
