“Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.”

People’s personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

The accent of one’s birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one’s speech.

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.

Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.

Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.

Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

In sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.

We say little, when vanity does not make us speak.

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.

Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

It is no harder for anyone to test this than it is for me to say it is false, since no one is prevented from counting teeth.

I’m a father, a son, and a grandson, and if anyone messed with my wife, mom, or grandmother, and if the law didn’t care about it, what would I do? Would I be defined by that action?

Strength is not nearly as important as desire. I don’t think you can teach anyone desire. I think it’s a gift. I don’t know why I have it, but I do.

Anyway, I just haven’t been able to find any humanity in any Republican candidate ever in my entire life.

I’m not going to impugn anyone’s integrity. I’m not going to attack their character. And, in fact, I will happily praise both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio as men who I admire, as people who I’m not going to go personal with them.

Anyone else has to come upstairs and see the Shogun. I’m still the Shogun.

I have my ups and my downs like anyone. All I can do is be me.