The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.

I have no fear that the candle lighted in Palestine years ago will ever be put out.

Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.

Don't get up from the feast of life without paying for your share of it.

Gambling is a disease of barbarians superficially civilized.

It was said that Mr. Gladstone could persuade most people of most things, and himself of anything.

Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.

The soul is dyed with the color of its leisure thoughts.

In praising science, it does not follow that we must adopt the very poor philosophies which scientific men have constructed. In philosophy they have much more to learn than to teach.

Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.

Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.

Love remembered and consecrated by grief belongs, more clearly than the happy intercourse of friends, to the eternal world; it has proved itself stronger than death.

All faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena.

The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.

To marry is to get a binocular view of life.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

Faith is an act of rational choice, which determines us to act as if certain things were true, and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true.

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.

A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.

Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.

Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy.

Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.

If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time.

We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse.

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.

A good government remains the greatest of human blessings and no nation has ever enjoyed it.

Democracy is only an experiment in government and it as the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

I liked Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and that is the kind of character that I would like to have played. That would have been more in tune with who I really was.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character.

The more we study the Indian's character the more we appreciate the marked distinction between the civilized being and the real savage.

So many people have said that to me, that what they really like about Alex is what she brings out in Marissa, and what this situation brings out in her, a hint of happiness and another side to her character.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.

Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

I just kind of understood it, and I threw my love for others and love for life into the character, and was having a blast. I loved playing Dharma. I loved it!

I think if you play a character that is fearless, then it's boring. I think that's what was so incredible about Harrison Ford, is that he always seemed like he was never going to survive it, he's always scared, and yet he always does survive it somehow.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

Every character I play has to be the hero of his own story, the way we're all heroes of our own lives.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

Character is power; it makes friends, draws patronage and support and opens the way to wealth, honor and happiness.