“Good music is very close to primitive language.”

The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

Whatever dressing one gives to mushrooms, to whatever sauces our Apiciuses put them, they are not really good but to be sent back to the dungheap where they are born.

You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

If a misplaced admiration shows imbecility, an affected criticism shows vice of character. Expose thyself rather to appear a beast than false.

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.

There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.

The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.

There’s a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it.

It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.

If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.

I do speak Mandarin, and I also relate to the hunger that China has for culture and architecture and style.

I do speak Mandarin, and I also relate to the hunger that China has for culture and architecture and style.

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.

Those wounds stay with you, and you turn them into a language and a purpose.

In both business and personal life, I’ve always found that travel inspires me more than anything else I do. Evidence of the languages, cultures, scenery, food, and design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every piece of my jewelry.

Most of conflicts and tensions are due to language. Don’t pay so much attention to the words. In love’s country, language doesn’t have its place. Love’s mute.