“To know how to hide one’s ability is great skill.”

If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.

The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.

Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.

We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.

Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.

Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.

We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.

Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.

The mind cannot long play the heart’s role.

We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.

Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are, who already possess it.

How do you know love is gone? If you said that you would be there at seven and you get there by nine, and he or she has not called the police yet – it’s gone.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

You know that old saying, ‘A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’ – that’s me.

To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we ‘know’ that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.

Don’t you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour — but a little bit of eternity dropped in your hands — and who knows what to do with it?

I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.

I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace.