Jerry Zucker

You have nothing to lose. Everything you have acquired of value is locked inside you.

In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

Friendship . . . is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.

But the mother’s yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

The never-ending task of self improvement.

The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.

In all evils which admits a remedy, impatience should be avoided, because it wastes the time and attention in complaints which, if properly applied, might remove the cause.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.