“Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.”

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant.

The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.

Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses.

A thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her.

A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.

I don’t need a church to tell me I’m wrong where I already know I’m wrong; I need a Church to tell me I’m wrong where I think I’m right.

Modern intelligence won’t accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.

We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth.

I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions…

A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.

All love affairs end. Eventually the girl is gonna put curlers in her hair.

Religion is the private affair of an individual…be present in the public domain, but state has to be clearly separated from religion.

In a totalitarian state, the state views any act of an individual to be political in nature. For example, the clothing that a person wears in a modern state is a private affair whereas in the Islamic Republic all women are forced to wear the hijab (Islamic attire).

I’ve had some wonderful love affairs and some that didn’t work out. I don’t want to dwell on that and I don’t want to put people down, but I think all the fabulous places I’ve been, the wonderful things that have happened for me, the great people I’ve met – that ought to make a story.

[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don’t care about culture.

Happiness is never a negative affair; it is to be won by men who are fully alive, full of the joy of living.