“There can be no acting or doing of any kind till it be recognized that there is a thing to be done; the thing once recognized, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible.”

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don’t happen at all.

It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.

The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and for it.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you.

There are remedies for all things but death.

Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.

Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? It is you, my mother.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind, a dog’s fidelity!

Marilyn is a kind of ultimate. She is uniquely feminine. Everything she does is different, strange, and exciting, from the way she talks to the way she uses that magnificent torso. She makes a man proud to be a man.

People hire me to create some kind of archetype or some culture type, or something. I guess they accept whatever I come up with.

T’was a thief said the last kind word to Christ. Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft.

My cinema – the ’50s, ’60s – is different from the cinema today so I thought that it would not be bad to show that kind of cinema where we could dream.

I remember the whole thing with the word ambition. I was messed up for a while because I associated it with certain people who just want to be famous. I think, for a while, it was kind of a dirty word for women.

The Wings of all kinds of Insects, are, for the most part, very beautiful Objects, and afford no less pleasing an Object to the mind to speculate upon, then to the eye to behold.”

The fact that everybody in the world dreams every night ties all mankind together.