“I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things based on the real, unless we first know the real.”

“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. With the laugh comes the tears and in developing motion pictures or television shows, you must combine all the facts of life - drama, pathos and humor.”

“The ideal set-up would be the story man, the director, and the layout man, as well as musician, operating as a sort of story unit. They all should be keenly interested in the picture. No one in person should donate to an extent where he would keep the others from entering into the production and freely expressing themselves.”

“The insignia meant a lot to the men who were fighting ... I had to do it ... I owed it to them.”

“It's because I like you, I don't want to be with you. It's a complicated emotion.”

“Come now, what masques, what dances shall we haveTo wear away this long age of three hoursBetween our after-supper and bedtime?”

“Performing on a stool, we've got a sight to make you drool, seven virgins and a mule, keep it cool, keep it cool.”

“Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians, and I like to watch both of 'em at play, either back home in their native state, or after they've been captured and sent to a zoo, or to Washington.”

“I play for high stakes and given an audience - there is no act too daring or too noble.”

“I would tell myself that I was about to address the largest mass assembly of idiots ever gathered in the history of mankind.”

“A comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious.”

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues.”

“Wisely weigh our sorrow with our comfort.”

“They are sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.”

“You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse”

“Those that do teach young babesDo it with gentle means and easy tasks.”

“Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.”

“To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”

“I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience.”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I; every man to his business.”

“But earthlier happy is the rose distill'dThan that which withering on the virgin thornGrows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.”

“What e'er thou art, act well thy part.”