“The poor man wants many things; the covetous man, all.”

Only the man who says no is free

They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.

Truth is in things, and not in words.

One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.

The most mighty of nature’s laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.

Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.

Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.

Honor lies in the mane of a horse.

There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.

Yet habit – strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

And again: No more gods! no more gods! Man is King, Man is God! – But the great Faith is Love!

Vain are the thousand creeds That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.

We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right.

A big part of what I wanted to do with this character was go from when I was a boy and try and develop into a man, really try and play him as a man who is on this search, on a journey of personal, spiritual, political, social discovery.

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

Women are not pals enough with men, so we must make ourselves indispensable. After all, we have the greatest weapon in our hands by just being women.

A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.

Women accept their destiny more readily than men.