“Practice yourself what you preach.”

The woman who has the best perfume is she who has none.

It is customary these days to ignore what should be done in favour of what pleases us.

You have eaten a meal dangerously seasoned.

Your wealth is where your friends are.

To a well deserving person God will show favor. To an ill deserving person He will simply be just.

Every man, however wise, needs the advice of some sagacious friend in the affairs of life.

Man’s fortune is usually changed at once; life is changeable.

It is the nature of the unfortunate to be spiteful, and to envy those who are well to do.

In misfortune if you cultivate a cheerful disposition you will reap the advantage of it.

You must spend money, if you wish to make money.

In everything the middle course is the best; everything in excess brings trouble.

If you are wise, be wise; keep what goods the gods provide you.

Poverty is a thorough instructress in all the arts.

It is sheer folly to take unwilling hounds to the chase.

I have taken a wife, I have sold my sovereignty for a dowry.

The evil that we know is best.

I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.

Nature teaches more than she preaches.

Not even always preaching but just leading, motivating them by being a leader.

My celebrity status allows me an opportunity, allows me a pulpit to preach and reach out to the people.

My uncle was a preacher, and I used to go watch him preach. He was also funny, so I’m very ‘preacher-ish’ on stage, not by intent but because that’s where I learned to talk in front of people.

Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes – the whole bag of tricks.