Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.
Men have a thousand desires to a bushel of choices.
Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.
Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying.
God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.
The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.
Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate.
Acting is fun and I refuse to get involved in the semantics and the politics of strategy and breaking out of something or doing something because you need to do something else. For me it's all about what fuels my soul and if I'm passionate about a screenplay then that's what I'll do next.
Film is like a drug. It is a shelter when you cannot deal with reality.
Marx called religion an opiate, and all too often it is. But philosophy is an anaesthetic, a shot to keep the wonder away.
And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.