“Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.”

As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.

Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

A society composed of none but the wicked could not exist; it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and without a flood, would be swept away from the earth by the deluge of its own iniquity.

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.

Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men; but when they do, they go greater lengths.

He that places himself neither higher nor lower than he ought to do exercises the truest humility.

Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.

I advance all of my canvas at one time.

I am so tired of waking to the blank canvas of morning and realizing it won’t be painted with you.

I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the little children jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming. They don’t know I’m only using blanks.

I like Stallone, because he writes. He sits down with a blank page and comes up with another Rambo movie. That isn’t very easy for anybody. He’s made it successful on top of that.

I become a bit of a blank page in public. And that’s precisely why I like acting.

We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

Even though I know who I am, musically I’m a blank canvas. I know what colors I want to use, but I don’t know what picture I want to paint yet.

I always thought I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say ‘figment.’