“No emotion, any more than a wave, can long retain its own individual form.”

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.

We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.

A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.

Downright admonition, as a rule, is too blunt for the recipient.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

A man’s character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.

Some people are proud of their humility.

If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense too, he is not far from genius.

Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ.

The beginning is the promise of the end.

The things that hurt us teach us.

There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.

The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!

True elegance becomes the more so as it approaches simplicity.

Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.

Indian actors, because of the format of our stories, need to be good actors, and be able to perform emotional sequences, do a bit of comedy, dance and singing, action, because all of this forms just one film. In many ways I’d say there are greater demands on Indian actors than there are on Hollywood.

Where there is pride, there is a feeling of insult.

We had forgotten the art of using silence to convey emotions in our films and that’s what you seem to have mastered. You’ve used silence to great advantage in the film. It’s brilliant.

Music to me is a voice, my voice, it’s my way of expressing what colours can I bring in, what emotions, what feel. What ideas can I bring out from these instruments that would make this song come alive.

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

People who meditate develop a habit of practicing sincere gratitude which helps them in all their relationships. It is a relationship-strengthening emotion because it requires us to see how we’ve been supported and affirmed by other people.

I was deeply unhappy, but I didn’t know it because I was so happy all the time.