A poet can feel free, in my estimation, to write a poem for himself. Or a painter can paint a painting for himself. You can write a short story for yourself. But for me, comedy by its nature is communal. If other people don't get it, I'm not sure why you are doing it.
Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.
'Master Blaster,' by Stevie Wonder, is up-tempo and fun, like Stevie himself. Stevie's always making jokes; he really knows how to put people at ease. He's one of my inspirations, as a musician and a person.
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
When a man says he is building a house for himself and his posterity, he does not mean to be understood as saying that he has any thought of binding them, nor is it to be inferred that he is so foolish as to imagine that he has any right or power to bind them, to live in it.
No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.
Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.
He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
Jesus made Himself available to everyone. Unlike former prophets and the religious men of His day, who often kept themselves aloof, Jesus was easy to approach and always ready to give his help.
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
Anyone who attempts to relate his life loses himself in the immediate. One can only speak of another.
A man who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away.
The image we have of bin Laden in his final years in Abbottabad is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself; just another suburban dad flipping though the channels with his remote.
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself.
There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself.
I feel like I was born and bred to stay self-motivated. I'm not one of those people who ho-hums and feels sorry for himself when something's bad.
If anyone thinks that Jews can steal into the land of their fathers, he is deceiving either himself or others. Nowhere is the coming of Jews so promptly noted as in the historic home of the Jews, for the very reason that it is the historic home.
Lastly, he must remember that he himself hath no exemption from the common lot, but that he is bound by the same laws of mortality, and liable to the same ailments and afflictions with his fellows.
A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it.
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
I studied all about Gauguin. He was a banker. He was a banker who - he used to paint on Sundays. And one day he hated himself for painting on Sundays.
Normally, an actress has to work to bring out her male side. In our case, the dynamic is reversed. The actor playing her modelled himself on Sharon Stone.
That's a wonderful change that's taken place, and so most poetry today is published, if not directly by the person, certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself, working with his friends.
Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!
The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods.
A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician.
In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world.
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.
'Balthazar' is very much about the title hero having to choose between his past and his future. For the first time in a long time, he has a chance to be happy - with Skye. But he has this terrible tendency to set himself up for heartbreak, in part because he punishes himself for his past.
No man is free who is not master of himself.
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Philip Roth is a fabulous writer, but he pretty much stays within his own life. He's so good - I mean, practically anything I've ever read of his I've really enjoyed. He just has tremendous talent. But I think he should have given himself a break and gone deeper into the society.
I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
I had always known that I couldn't play Dr. King purely out of my own ability as an actor. When you look at him give those speeches, you can tell that he is taken up by something other than himself. He is flowing with an anointing that is directly from God.
