There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.
George Eliot

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.
George Eliot

Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.
Lewis Mumford

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.
Robert Louis Stevenson

But I didn't ask to have somebody nose around in my private life. I didn't even ask to be famous. All I asked was to be able to earn a living making people laugh.
Carol Burnett

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.
Elbert Hubbard

When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.
Thomas Hobbes

There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.
Thomas Babington

Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.
Grover Cleveland

I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the opposition would seek, and the chief executive would allow, the dissemination of his most private and personal conversations with his staff, which, to be honest, do not exactly confer sainthood on anyone concerned.
Gerald R. Ford

In all my public and private acts as your president, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end.
Gerald R. Ford

An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.
John Updike

I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.
H. P. Lovecraft

Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought.
Bernard Baruch

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency.
Miguel De Cervantes

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Samuel Butler

I am accordingly ready; I have pressed as many Cabinet papers into trunks as to fill one carriage; our private property must be sacrificed, as it is impossible to procure wagons for its transportation.
Dolley Madison

Our private property must be sacrificed.
Dolley Madison

It seems proper, at all events, that by an early enactment similar to that of other countries the application of public money by an officer of Government to private uses should be made a felony and visited with severe and ignominious punishment.
Martin Van Buren