“Example is the softest and least invidious way of commanding.”

On a farm the best fertilizer is the master’s eye.

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read.

Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work.

True happiness consists in being considered deserving of it.

Wine maketh the band quivering, the eye watery, the night unquiet, lewd dreams, a stinking breath in the morning, and an utter forgetfulness of all things.

Among these things, one thing seems certain – that nothing certain exists and that there is nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.

The most disgraceful cause of the scarcity [of remedies] is that even those who know them do not want to point them out, as if they were going to lose what they pass on to others.

We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides.

The desire to know a thing is heightened by its gratification being deferred.

The only certainty is uncertainty

Better do nothing than do ill.

The best kind of wine is that which is most pleasant to him who drinks it.

Let that which is wanting in income be supplied by economy.

War should neither be feared nor provoked.

As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, so is the mind by exercising it with different studies.

As for the garden of mint, the very smell of it alone recovers and refreshes our spirits, as the taste stirs up our appetite for meat.

Owning your own feelings, rather than blaming them on someone else, is the mark of a person who has moved from contracted to expanded awareness.

I have two passions in my life. One is to raise the awareness of the internment of Japanese-American citizens. My other passion is the theater.

What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.

I know where I’m going, and I know where I’ve been.

A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.

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

I’ve always tried to be aware of what I say in my films, because all of us who make motion pictures are teachers – teachers with very loud voices.

For the future, the motto is, “No days unalert.”