Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.

Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than all the other distractions that life presents to them.

What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it - would you be likely to give them another? Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have.

I spent so many years in terror of 'making it legal' because the expression rang all too true - the wedding ritual struck me as nothing but a flowery front for the fulfilment of countless, tedious contracts and obligations.

I believe if an individual wants to join organized labor and work under a union contract, they should have the legal right to do so. At the same token, a person who does not want to work under organized labor and wants to work should have the ability to do so without the threat of having to join and having to pay dues to organized labor.

I've learned that most of gay America is coupled up, or looking to be. No wonder gay marriage has such traction. So many of us are already in it, so of course we want the legal benefits.

When I became an entrepreneur, I had the knowledge to develop and manage budgets, market products and review legal contracts.

Relying on the face might be human nature - even babies prefer to look at attractive people. But, of course, judging someone based on the geometry of his features is, from a moral and legal standpoint, no better than judging him based on the color of his skin.

The legacy of slavery comes from the sustained political, legal and economic effort to link permanently an entire group of people to poverty - and to mystify that systematic disenfranchisement by making up something called race, which could serve as a distraction.

Politicians are addicted to spending and revenue extraction. As with an addict, there's little pause for moral or legal contemplation.

The mental capacity of a person to make reasonable contracts, is the only criterion, by which to determine his legal capacity to make obligatory contracts. And his mental capacity to make reasonable contracts is certainly not to be determined by the fact that he is, or is not, twenty-one years of age.

Now a slave is not 'held' by any legal contract, obligation, duty, or authority, which the laws will enforce. He is 'held' only by brute force. One person beats another until the latter will obey him, work for him, if he require it, or do nothing if he require it.

Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it, that the Union was preserved.

And they didn't have to get into a lot of legal speak or talk ER terms, they were real people. I think that's why so many actresses were attracted to it. And it was just about problems that you could identify with so much, right off the bat.

I believe wholeheartedly in marriage. I don't exclusively mean a marriage with a legal contract, but any relationship that constitutes a marriage because of the quality of their relationship.

In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that's called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country.

In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.

The real violence is committed in the writing of history, the records of the legal system, the reporting of news, through the manipulation of social contracts, and the control of information.

State-sanctioned marriage is a civil contract, period. A contract is not a judgment of moral value. It is a legal agreement between two parties that testifies to a meeting of minds between those consenting entities. It is not a religious act or rite and so has nothing to do with Adam and Eve or Steve or even Harvey.

Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as 'the intelligent layperson' does exist - in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning.

In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.

I'm learning to believe that my epilepsy doesn't disbar me from being considered attractive, so if I think I look palatable in A&E I'll damn well Instagram it.

Learning Jimmy Carr riffs off by heart is not the way to anyone's heart, unless you're Jimmy Carr. And remember, the two most attractive things in a man is a sense of danger and being able to make a girl feel really safe.

Arab civilizations had been of an abstract nature, moral and intellectual rather than applied; and their lack of public spirit made their excellent private qualities futile. They were fortunate in their epoch: Europe had fallen barbarous; and the memory of Greek and Latin learning was fading from men's minds.