Virtues are acquired through endeavor, which rests wholly upon yourself.

Music is love in search of a word.

Virtues are acquired through endeavor, which rests wholly upon yourself.

If you want to be found stand where the seeker seeks.

But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: 'What is the province of music in the economy of the world?'

Gradually I find that my whole soul is merging itself into this business of writing, and especially of writing poetry. I am going to try it; and am going to test, in the most rigid way I know, the awful question whether it is my vocation.

I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a conceit rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and others of that ilk.

If a man made himself an expert in any particular branch of human activity, there would result the strong tendency that a peculiar aptitude towards the same branch would be found among some of his descendants.

A happy life is made up of little thingsa gift sent a letter written a call made a recommendation given transportation provided a cake made a book lent a check sent.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

I'll tell you what I was like as a child. I was a good person. I was high-spirited but I was a big reader.

I think it's fair to say I've always been a boxing fan.

And to me, I had come out of Texas, and during that time was when I realized that a lot of people in Nashville, their idea of what country music was was not the same as mine.

Education is dangerous - every educated person is a future enemy.

I think if I were to express my wish, it would be that we are more regionally self-reliant. And I don't mean people being survivalists, I mean regionally self-reliant. So that you have these individual cells. The idea of having different solutions in different areas, so that we have a very robust, durable civilization.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

Of the two, I considered it more important to avoid a war with England about Oregon than a war with Mexico, important as I thought it was to avoid that.

It's hard to guess how smart the machines are, but a good rule of thumb is that they're always smarter than you think.

People commonly educate their children as they build their houses, according to some plan they think beautiful, without considering whether it is suited to the purposes for which they are designed.

People's ignorance really pisses me off. Stupidity is when you can't help it-ignorance is when you choose not to understand something.

'Neverwhere,' by Benjamin Millepied, is set to his favorite composer, Nico Muhly.

The first several years I was an actor, I sort of eked out a living playing thugs almost exclusively until 'Robocop.'

When Hobby Lobby was created in the early 1970s, I was committed to use profits to help ministry work.

I think you use the negative things that happen from the year before - and from other years, too - to spur you to do the things you need to do to take the next step.

I don't know how anyone could vote Republican. It's so obvious that their only interest is keeping the rich rich.

It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of America's foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

You can have anything in this world you want, if you want it badly enough and you're willing to pay the price.

And we ask the American people to play an important part of our layered defense. We ask for cooperation, patience and a commitment to vigilance in the face of a determined enemy.

One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself.

I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012.

I eat lots of vegetables and green juices.