Character is greater than talent, genius, fame, money, friends - there is nothing to compare with it. A man may have all these and yet remain comparatively useless - be unhappy - and die a bankrupt in soul.

What is more beautiful than a sea of water with a number of white-winged boats skirting its surface? Poetry and beauty contesting with the wind and the waves!

Sailing a boat calls for quick action, a blending of feeling with the wind and water as well as with the very heart and soul of the boat itself. Sailing teaches alertness and courage, and gives in return a joyousness and peace that but few sports afford.

Courage is heartworth making itself felt in deeds. It never waits for chances; it makes chances.

It is a great thing to have a big brain, a fertile imagination, grand ideals, but the man with these, bereft of a good backbone, is sure to serve no useful end.

I loved rock and roll when that came in, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, all those great records. So I begged my mom and dad for a guitar, which eventually they did get me for Christmas, but it went out of tune very quickly, and it hurt my fingers.

It's tough to be 68 and dating. I've given it up now.

My love for American music and American movies is from an early age. I was 10 or 11 when I heard Fats Domino and Little Richard and Buddy Holly. And the movies, my dad used to take my brother and I to the movies every Friday. It was incredible: we got to see just about every movie that came out for a period of years.

Throughout my college years, I'd watch my sister squeal every Christmas as she unwrapped another 'Buffy' DVD set. I didn't know much about the series, but I was filled with that obnoxious self-importance that comes from having decided to be an Academic Who Reads Serious Things.

It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.

All men are created equal, it is only men themselves who place themselves above equality.

I've never wanted anybody to like me because I had long hair or short hair, or that they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I smile.

Our whole family assembles in Chicago at Christmas and usually in Aspen in the summer.

I asked for a guitar when I was 8 years old for Christmas. I have no idea why. I never had any guitar heroes. I still don't. But there must have been something in me because I've been playing for 30 years.

Like my best friend, I asked for drums for Christmas, and got them. But when he moved on to guitar, I realized two things: (1) guitar is a much more expressive instrument, (2) way more girls pay attention to guitar players than to drummers.

Bloody Christmas, here again, let us raise a loving cup, peace on earth, goodwill to men, and make them do the washing up.

There is some humour in 'Family Values.' I don't want everyone to think it's not going to make them laugh. But there are quite a lot of poems there that aren't funny at all.

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

You have to pretend that your life is a financial pleasure even when your autographs are bouncing.

We're first on executions. We're 49th in funding public education. We're in a race with Mississippi for the bottom, and we're winning.

May the God of your choice bless and keep you. I respect Him as long as He does not circumcise me anymore.

Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.

I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.

I've always said money may buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail.

Politics is the only field in which the more experience you have, the worse you get.

How can you look at the Texas legislature and still believe in intelligent design?

After church on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, my family would go chop down our Christmas tree. Once it was home and placed in its stand, Mom and I would painstakingly decorate our tree. It took hours to place the tinsel, string the lights, find the perfect spot for my favorite macaroni and felt ornaments from kindergarten.

It's funny what memory does, isn't it? My favorite holiday tradition might not have happened more than once or twice. But because it is such a good memory, so encapsulating of everything I love about the holidays, in my mind it happened every year. Without fail.

The true beauty of music is that it connects people. It carries a message, and we, the musicians, are the messengers.

Having good health, being able to breathe and be happy, that's one of the most beautiful gifts. On top of that, I have the gift to play music and make people happy through that. I'm just telling you from my heart, I'm so in love with life.

'A Tuna Christmas' is the second in a series of plays created by Joe Sears and Jaston Williams featuring the fictional town of Greater Tuna, the third-smallest town in Texas. What makes these plays so hysterically funny is the accurate portrayal of small-town life in the Lone Star State.

The most challenging roles were Disney's 'A Christmas Carol' and 'Mars Needs Moms' because they were both motion capture, so there was a lot of physical work involved.

Before we took down the tree each year, Dad would always say a prayer that we would be together the next Christmas. I cling to that prayer, which serves as a reminder that it's important to be grateful in the present for the people you love because, well, you never know.

One of the reasons you take a role is because it's something you always wanted to do, from going to the movies as a kid. I always wanted to do a 1950s movie, for example. And I got a chance to be in 'Peggy Sue Got Married.' I would have taken only one line of dialogue to be in that.

No beauty shines brighter than that of a good heart.

I think every person has their own identity and beauty. Everyone being different is what is really beautiful. If we were all the same, it would be boring.

When I started on MySpace, people wanted to support me, but once I rose to fame with the MTV show, they felt like I had abandoned them for some reason, that I was too famous to talk to them anymore.

Do you know the difference between a beautiful woman and a charming one? A beauty is a woman you notice, a charmer is one who notices you.

A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.

To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man - and also a nation.

I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.

Freedom rings where opinions clash.

A hungry man is not a free man.

We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.

The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.

Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.

We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace. Preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft.

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.