“There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.”

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one’s own inner self.

The world is but a perpetual see-saw.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

A man of strong opinions is one thing. But a man whose strong opinions depend entirely on how he is feeling in that instant is a disastrous thing in a city of 10 million people just trying to muddle through.

I learned more about acting from George Stevens in a few months than I had in my entire life up until then

That’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever.

I read somewhere that some people believe that the entire universe is a matrix of living thought. And I said, “Man, if that’s not a definition of God, I don’t know what is.

There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world.

I hear entire symphonies, oratorios, in my head, but I can’t write a note.

Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life.