“I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.”

Life is nothing without friendship.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.

No power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be strong enough to survive.

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself: if you heed yourself, you’ll never go wrong.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

What is sweeter than lettered ease?

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

Nothing cruel is in fact beneficial; for cruelty is extremely hostile to the nature of man, which we ought to follow.

To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.

The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are.

I’m sure drugs and alcohol perhaps would inspire new thoughts, but it’s certainly not something that I use as a tool or a mechanism to create.

If anybody knows how to make action movies it’s Sly.

A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.

The philosopher creates, he doesn’t reflect.

I like to see films that come out with lower budgets because you’re forced into using your imagination. You don’t have everything at your fingertips. You have to create it from scratch.

slavery was a system that depended on the creation of deep levels of fear.

Action on the move creates its own route, creates to a very great extent the conditions under which it is to be fulfilled and thus baffles all calculation.

I trust work, directors – I don’t live in fear. All good experiences have come from trusting the universe. There is no other way to live or love. Otherwise, you create your own prison.