"Instead of feeling a poverty when we..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Books are for nothing but to inspire”

“The flowering of civilization is the finished man, the man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of social power--the gentleman.”

“Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.”

“Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.”

“It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain.”

“Man is so great that his greatness appears even in the consciousness of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way, all man's miseries go to prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a mighty potentate, of a dethroned monarch.”

“I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead - ahead of myself as well as you.”

“People always ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to go to work for whom they admire the most.”

“What we did [shooting "Fences"] was we got young students from Carnegie Mellon, the acting and theater students, and we had them as our understudies. I told them, "You have to be off book and be ready. If Viola [Davis] has to leave you have to jump in."”