Technically, I'm a knight. My family goes back a thousand years in the Naples area. We're a titled, noble people.
The next time you download a book on Kindle, buy a Michael Moore screed at Barnes & Noble, or order up a political movie from video on demand, remember that it is the Supreme Court's decision in 'Citizens United' that guarantees you the right to do so.
I've always sort of thought that politics was a high and noble calling and a good thing to do.
My idol is Emile Zola. He was a man of the left, so people expected of him a kind of 'Les Miserables,' in which the underdogs are always noble people. But he went out, and found a lot of ambitious, drunk, slothful and mean people out there. Zola simply could not - and was not interested in - telling a lie.
Right now people are interested in genetic engineering to help the human race. That's a noble cause, and that's where we should be heading. But once we get past that - once we understand what genetic diseases we can deal with - when we start thinking about the future, there's an opportunity to create some new life-forms.
He who walks in the eightfold noble path with unswerving determination is sure to reach Nirvana.
Whether you think a film will affect society or it's plain entertainment, it's all excellent, it's all noble.
The noble gases, which reside on the East Coast of the periodic table, are its aristocrats - detached and aloof, never bothering to interact with the rabble of common elements that make up the vast majority of the world.
Remember that a noble logical diagram, once recorded, will never die; long after we are gone, it will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.
Our best selves tell us that 'there but for the grace of God... ' and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God's grief and heart for us all.
Government is never so noble as when it is addressing wrongs.
I have a noble body. It adapts to all I ask of it.
I prefer a change of surroundings anyway, and I like to be around some energy and white noise, so I usually go to a Barnes & Noble cafe or to the library on 5th and 42nd. In the afternoons, I do research, reading, editing, and play with the kids.
To realize life in the abstract as noble or beautiful or humane, to set it forth so with radiance upon it, that is civilization in the arts. Shakespeare is the chief modern example of this supreme faculty of mankind.
Strangely, charity sometimes gets dismissed, as if it is ineffective, inappropriate or even somehow demeaning to the recipient. 'This isn't charity,' some donors take pains to claim, 'This is an investment.' Let us recognize charity for what it is at heart: a noble enterprise aimed at bettering the human condition.
I've always embraced failure as a noble pursuit. It allows you to be anti whatever anyone wants you to be, and to break all the rules.
During my first years in the Sierra, I was ever calling on everybody within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure that of all men he would best interpret the sayings of these noble mountains and trees. Nor was my faith weakened when I met him in Yosemite.
The Shat-el-Arab is a noble river or estuary. From both its Persian and Turkish shores, however, mountains have disappeared, and dark forests of date palms intersected by canals fringe its margin heavily, and extend to some distance inland.
The pure air and dazzling snow belong to things beyond the reach of all personal feeling, almost beyond the reach of life. Yet such things are a part of our life, neither the least noble nor the most terrible.
I come from a pretty working-class neighborhood in Chicago. Hard work was just expected of you. It wasn't some noble thing you did; it was a prerequisite. It's what a man did. You get up, you put on your boots, and you work hard. We've lost a lot of that, I'm afraid.
A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance.
The most important thing for me is the thing I strive for. But I also hope when I play my songs for people - adult, children, mostly children - that they feel mighty, they feel noble, they feel like warriors. And they feel like they can do anything in the world because that's how I feel.
We have ground for believing that a noble form of socialism existed among the prehistoric and primitive people on this planet, the people that broke into restless groups after the ancient Deluge and went wandering over the globe. For we find a socialist tendency in all the barbaric tribes of earth.
I've done about 15 movies and four television series in Mexico. My last two movies were the highest grossing in Mexican-cinema history - 'Nosotros los Nobles' and 'Instructions Not Included.'
No one can feel more gratefully the charm of noble scenery, or the refreshment of escape into the unspoiled solitudes of nature, than the laborer at some close in-door employment.
It is proper that noble spirits, equipped with truth and enlightened with the Divine intelligence, should arm themselves against dense ignorance by climbing up to the high rock and tower of contemplation.
In the early 2000s, I was introduced to the noble art of kickboxing, it thrilled me, and I loved it. I loved the honour and the discipline, and I also loved the punching.
The cry comes from the friends of the school-room, from those who would give the State a strong, great, noble citizenship, for protection from the curse of drunkenness. This cry should be heard and answered by every lover of his fellow-men, no matter where his home may be.
My beloved Elisa, my companion and wife, whom I love and revere, is one of the most noble of our Heavenly Father's handmaidens.
My dad's era believed that there was something noble in being a good guy - the kind of guy that lived straight and narrow, told the truth, and stood up for what he believed was right.
I worked in the NHS as a hospital orderly during my national service, and people thought it was a noble service. But over the years it's lost its humanity.
When someone sets out to be controversial or provocative or shocking as an end in itself, I don't think that's a noble goal.
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
