I may be president of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damned business.

I’ve always been a private person and I’ve always valued my private life.

My private life is the most precious thing to me.

I don’t know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.

Keeping your private life as private as possible is the smartest thing.

Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.

Your private life is your private life and you keep it to yourself. You get more respect that way.

When people ask me silly questions about my private life, I just say, I don’t discuss that.

I like to keep most of my private life private.

… No, the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me.

What people do in their private lives is their business, and shouldn’t be anybody else’s business.

The word liberty has been falsely used by persons who, being degenerately profligate in private life, and mischievous in public, had no hope left but in fomenting discord.

I’m a very private person. I like staying home and doing my stuff. I hate people invading on my privacy. I hate talking about my private life.

When you talk about a great actor, you’re not talking about Tom Cruise. His whole behavior is so shocking. It’s inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it’s kind of a sickness.

It doesn’t bother me to talk about my private life, it doesn’t bother me to talk about anything. My life is like a glass of water, transparent.

I try not to think about my public life. I focus on my private life, and that’s just the best way to live.

He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.

I had led a private life and wanted to die a private death.

Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to get on a television show to reveal.

From offstage until the moment I walk onstage, I constantly tweak my talk show and ‘Top Model’, but at the same time, I often leave my private life by the wayside.

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

It’s inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it’s kind of a sickness.

People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.

Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.

[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindeness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps mostof all, ideally, what is wanted is a comfortable background, a breathing space of intermission between the intensities of private life and the calculations of public life.

The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,–more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.

The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.

Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men’s private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.

A private Life is to be preferrd; the Honour and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it.

The state is based on this contradiction. It is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities.

A prince wants only the pleasure of private life to complete his happiness.

Family life is an encroachment on private life.

Philosophy is a necessary activity because we, all of us, take a great number of things for granted, and many of these assumptions are of a philosophical character; we act on them in private life, in politics, in our work, and in every other sphere of our lives — but while some of these assumptions are no doubt true, it is likely, that more are false and some are harmful. So the critical examination of our presuppositions — which is a philosophical activity — is morally as well as intellectually important.

But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property comes another institution-that of plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which unlike most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then.

I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it… painting is one’s private life.

I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.

If a man’s public record be a clear one, if he has kept his pledges before the world, I do not inquire what his private life may have been.

No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures that live quiet private lives in the marshes of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught, slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seems to mind this and all of them are called Zem.

It is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man’s estate.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.

I do not remember anything which Confucius has said directly respecting man’s “origin, purpose, and destiny.” He was more practical than that. He is full of wisdom applied to human relations,–to the private life,–the family,–government, etc. It is remarkable that, according to his own account, the sum and substance of his teaching is, as you know, to do as you would be done by.

People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.

At a time when history made its way slowly, the few events were easily remembered and woven into a backdrop, known to everyone, before which private life unfolded the gripping show of its adventures. Nowadays, time moves forward at a rapid pace. Forgotten overnight, a historic event glistens the next day like the morning dew and thus is no longer the backdrop to a narrator’s tale but rather an amazing adventure enacted against the background of the over-familiar banality of private life.

For some people it’s real therapy to talk to journalists about their private lives and inner thoughts. But I would rather keep something to myself.

So, Mr. Chadband-of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave off, having once the audacity to begin-retires into private life until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade.

Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.