“We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.”

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.

If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.

May you live all the days of your life.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.

A nation must be embraced, rehabilitated and expressed as a tangible sign of human creativity and as an integral element of mankinds heritage.

Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of this material world

It is energy – the central element of which is will – that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.

Everything destroyed is either resolved into the elements from which it came, or else vanishes into not-being. If things are resolved into the elements from which they came, then there will be others: else how did they come into being at all?

This was pointed out to me by somebody who referred to the paintings of Rembrandt and his use of light: some elements are highlighted while others are obscured or even pushed back into the dark.

My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.

There are so many elements that make a good film. You need a great director who’s driving it.

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.