“Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.”

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.

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

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.

So fine that the Irish don’t even acknowledge that it exists.

Rain is also very difficult to film, particularly in Ireland because it’s quite fine.

That’s the fine balance of a fiction writer…to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.

This is not to say that the Scots are not fine people, but they were all sort of.

Children have much more finely tuned senses of justice, morals, and ethics. They are much more Platonic: children are symmetrical, before we begin to fragment them with our own nonsensical ideas and squelch their natural joy in knowledge.

Justice is such a fine thing that we cannot pay too dearly for it.

There are probably a few library fines I haven’t paid yet, but I’m a pretty clean-cut guy overall.

I believed there was enough evidence to go to trial. Grand jury said there wasn’t. Okay, fine. Do I have a right to disagree with the grand jury? Many Americans believe O.J. Simpson was guilty.