The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.

Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.

Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.

A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said - and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded - 'It's like hair color. It's nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It's not a subject.' This was a very healthy attitude.

My mother, she had a very good attitude toward money. I'm very grateful for the fact that we had to learn to save. I used to get like 50 pence a week, and I'd save it for like five months. And then I'd spend it on Christmas presents. I'd save up like eight pounds. It's nothing, but we did that.

I have always detested any departure from reality, an attitude which I relate to my mother's poor mental health.

I was never a glamour puss whose career was really based on a look or an attitude. I've been basically playing the same parts I am at 55 that I was at 35. I get cast as strong women, and that can be a mother or a judge or anything.

That attitude that I wouldn't succeed didn't come from my family; it came from school and then the township we lived in. I wasn't going to settle for that, and my mother warned us not to settle for less, to make the most of our lives.