All Quotes

"Dokonałem zwrotu o 360 stopni."

"I am for, and even against."

"(About the defeat of communism) Interviewer: Can it be said that the Pope brought the forces of the free world together?"

"The weakness of the Eastern European regimes was demonstrated anew in Poland, both by the activities of underground Solidarity and by the serious strikes that began in April 1988. The government had grudgingly sought to widen its support by negotiating with other elements, but it wished to exclude Solidarity. The Catholic Church, however, refused to create a co-operative Christian labour movement as the government wanted, preferring to leave the more intransigent Solidarity as the key body for negotiations. The Communists were opposed to trade union pluralism, but, as a sign of movement on the government’s part, the amnesty of 1986 had freed political prisoners. The 1988 strikes discouraged the Party leadership and demonstrated its failure to find a solution to Poland’s problems. Combined with Gorbachev’s renunciation of intervention on behalf of Communism, this failure encouraged the leadership to move toward yielding its monopoly of power. On 30 November 1988, there was a televised debate between Lech Walesa and Alfred Miodowicz, the head of the official trade union federation and a member of the Politburo. This was a highly significant step as the television served as a means of controlling the dissemination of opinion. On 6 February 1989, Round Table talks between government and the technically illegal opposition began, with the Church, an institution of great prestige in Poland, playing an important mediatory role. Under an agreement, signed on 5 April 1989, reached against a background of widespread strikes, elections were held in Poland on 4 June. Only 35 per cent of the seats in the lower house, the Sejm, were awarded on the basis of the free vote, the remainder going to the Communists and their allies, but all of these seats were won by Solidarity. This expression of the public will was a dramatic blow to the old order. Communist cohesion collapsed, not least with the Communist Party being abandoned by its hitherto pliant allies. Strikes and other protests meanwhile continued. The new government was headed by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a member of Solidarity and a Catholic intellectual. He became the first non-Communist Prime Minister behind the Iron Curtain. There was, however, to be a major division between those who endorsed the ‘Round Table’ political settlement of 1989 as a way to avoid bloodshed, and those who criticised it as, allegedly, a compromise providing subsequent cover for ex-Communists to pillage the state."

"Moreover, Catholicism was the driving force behind the new Polish independent trade union, baptized Solidarity, which began to function in the Gdansk shipyard in June 1980, achieved reluctant legal recognition from the regime two months later, and, under its fervent Catholic leader, Lech Walesa, gradually undermined the regime during the decade. A further eight-year legal ban, imposed in 1981, was finally ended in April 1989, when Communist authority began to collapse. Four months later, on 24 August, Poland became the first country in the Soviet bloc to appoint a non-Communist government, with Walesa’s colleague, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, editor of a Catholic newspaper, as Prime Minister. The destruction of Communism was completed in 1990–91, when Walesa himself became President, and all remaining religious restraints were removed. This largely peaceful change of regime showed how powerful the alliance between the human longing for personal freedom and the force of religious belief could be."

"I was hanging out the other night with a bunch of friends I've known forever. They were saying, "Look at you. You've grown into a swan." I looked at them and said, "My awkward phase lasted about three years longer than all of yours combined." I related to the physical and emotional awkwardness Mia goes through. She has incredibly low self-esteem. A lot of my life was spent having the same thing, but I'm getting over that now."

"Taking a year off and going to school was the best thing I could have done after The Princess Diaries. It taught me that I don't need Hollywood or a job to make me happy."

"We've all done things we shouldn't, it's just I did stuff at college, when nobody knew about it, so I'm not a saint. … I wasted time doing self-destructive things but it didn't work. I found out you can only dance on so many tabletops. I got that all out of my system and now I'm healthy and I'm grounded."

"Before I met him, I wasted so much time. I was just annoying and narcissistic and smelled bad. He’s protective without being possessive, passionate without needing to show his temper."

"I have a lot more respect for it as a business. I understand fashion a lot more. Style, for me, is something I still can't get right."

"When I was younger I thought about becoming a nun for a while. You know how it is when you're growing up and you're going to be a lot of different things, but I actually wanted to be an actress before I wanted to be a nun. The nun was more of a side-bar thing."

"It's easier to think about the way I'm least daring. When I meet people for the first time, I'm friendly but shy. I'm much less outwardly nervous than I used to be, but I still get anxious sometimes. I'm not very daring in my street style, usually because there's a photographer around! I am getting more daring now—I'll wear my mom jeans in public that haven't been tailored 'just so' yet, just because they feel good. For a long time I was afraid of the harsh things people would say about me, but I might as well be happy."

"I did work at Christie’s for a couple of weeks, getting ready for The Devil Wears Prada, getting people coffee and doing whatever they needed around the office. It was amazing. I got to see some wonderful art and everybody was really nice. It was great."

"I’m always hyper-aware of how not to be a you-know-what. So to actually let it go and to lean into all the ridiculous fame nonsense that I’ve been trying to side-step for all of these years just felt really, really fun. It just felt great and to play someone who had such an enormous ego and someone who takes herself so seriously, and is so insufferable, came very naturally to me."

"Une femme d'esprit est un diable en intrigue."

""Bueno, si mi pueblo perece, por falta de conocimiento. Aqui le va una aspirina"

"Tirer les marrons du feu avec la patte du chat."

"J’enrage de bon cœur d’avoir tort, lorsque j’ai raison."

"Ah que je— Vous l'avez voulu, vous l'avez voulu, George Dandin, vous l'avez voulu, cela vous sied fort bien, et vous voilà ajusté comme il faut, vous avez justement ce que vous méritez."

"Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?"

"Ah! Il n'y a plus d'enfants!"

"Presque tous les hommes meurent de leurs remèdes, et non pas de leurs maladies."

"Quare Opium facit dormire: … Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva."

"Si l’emploi de la comédie est de corriger les vices des hommes, je ne vois pas par quelle raison il y en aura de privilégiés. Celui-ci est, dans l’État, d’une conséquence bien plus dangereuse que tous les autres ; et nous avons vu que le théâtre a une grande vertu pour la correction. Les plus beaux traits d’une sérieuse morale sont moins puissants, le plus souvent, que ceux de la satire ; et rien ne reprend mieux la plupart des hommes que la peinture de leurs défauts. C’est une grande atteinte aux vices que de les exposer à la risée de tout le monde. On souffre aisément des répréhensions ; mais on ne souffre point la raillerie. On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule."

"Vous êtes un sot en trois lettres, mon fils."

"Contre la médisance il n'est point de rempart."

"Ceux de qui la conduite offre le plus à rire Sont toujours sur autrui les premiers à médire."

"À votre nez, mon frère, elle se rit de vous."

"Une femme a toujours une vengeance prête."

"Couvrez ce sein que je ne saurais voir. Par de pareils objets les âmes sont blessées."

"Pour être dévot, je n'en suis pas moins homme."

"Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l'offense, Et ce n'est pas pécher que pécher en silence."

"Je l'ai vu, dis-je, de mes propres yeux vu."

"Sur quelque préférence une estime se fonde, Et c'est n'estimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde."

"Et c’est une folie, à nulle autre, seconde, De vouloir se mêler de corriger le monde."

"C'est un parleur étrange, et qui trouve toujours L'art de ne vous rien dire avec de grands discours."

"Que de son cuisinier il s'est fait un mérite, Et que c'est à sa table à qui l'on rend visite."

"On voit qu'il se travaille à dire de bons mots."

"Plus on aime quelqu'un, moins il faut qu'on le flatte: À rien pardonner le pur amour éclate."

"Les doutes sont fâcheux plus que toute autre chose."

"On peut être honnête homme et faire mal des vers."

"Si de probité tout était revêtu, Si tous les cœurs était francs, justes et dociles, La plupart des vertus nous seraient inutiles, Puisqu'on en met l'usage à pouvoir sans ennui Supporter dans nos droits l'injustice d'autrui."

"C'est un merveilleux assaisonnement aux plaisirs qu'on goûte que la présence des gens qu'on aime."

"J'aime mieux un vice commode, Qu'une fatigante vertu."

"Le véritable Amphitryon, Est l'Amphitryon où l'on dine."

"Le Seigneur Jupiter sait dorer la pilule."

"[J]e veux que tu me dises à qui lu parles quand lu dis cela. Je parle... je parle à mon bonnet."

"Les beaux yeux de ma cassette."

"Vous parlez devant un homme à qui tout Naples est connu."

"Tout ce qui n'est point prose, est vers; et tout ce qui n'est point vers, est prose."