“On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, ‘Twas only when he was off, he was acting.”

All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little.

Honour sinks where commerce long prevails.

Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.

Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.

Girls like to be played with, and rumpled a little too, sometimes.

Be not affronted at a joke. If one throw salt at thee, thou wilt receive no harm, unless thou art raw.

When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?

Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same.

Where wealth accumulates, men decay.

Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!

Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

The jests of the rich are ever successful.

I was ever of the opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population.

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes.

It’s very evocative; it’s like a first cut because you hear ‘She walked to the door,’ and you visualize all these things. ‘She opens the door’ . . . because you read the stage directions, too.

Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions.

The stage is different ; there’s more to act. There are more demands put on you, more experiences to go through.

You think you can do it better? Hey, go right ahead. The stage is yours.

I had my moment on the stage. The trick in life is to know when to leave.

A very few minutes, because seven days later I was in the studio, and eight days later, I was no the stage.

Every day is Thanksgiving.On this stage you’re going to hear God and none of them other words, and I ain’t going to touch my stuff.

The hardest part about being a celebrity is having to heal on a public stage.