Pastoral Resources

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.

I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.

Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it.

The Social Security trust fund is in pretty good shape today and we should not embark upon risky, dangerous schemes which will, in fact, undermine Social Security, such as privatization.

France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.

To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

A nation is a totality of men united through community of fate into a community of character.

In fact, I really didn't get enthused about his Secretary of State race until I attended a couple of his rallies and found out there were a bunch of young folks that there were a bunch of young folks that he had been able to recruit on his own.

When you have to play a character that seems to be a relatively decent person and seems to be like yourself, I think the trick in that kind of character, so that you don't become a cliche, is to find where their weaknesses are.

Oftentimes what happens is that the writer understands one character, but they don't understand the other one, and the other one ends up not being written as well.

In fact, 80 percent of our domestic job growth comes from the small- and medium-sized business community.

Sharpe is my favorite role of all that I've played. He's a very complex character. He knows that he's a good soldier, but he will always have to fight the prejudice of aristocratic officers because of his rough working-class upbringing. On the battlefield, he's full of confidence - but off it, he is unsure, a bit shy and ill at ease.

If you have a very good concept of your character, you can snap into it.

I sort of leave the character at the end of the day. I don't carry anything around with me - no excess baggage or unnecessary thoughts. I think it's too exhausting to do that. To put things into perspective - your work is your work, and your leisure time is something else.

006 was such an interesting character and the film really explored his friendship with Bond and how it all went wrong, so it was a very personal journey for both characters.

I think that you always have something left, that you take something of the character with you.

I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.