Old age makes caricatures of us all.

Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.

Every island to a child is a treasure island.

The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.

Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.

The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.

we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.

Most of my life I have needed more time to be on my own.

however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.

Love, always love. Perhaps that’s what we’re all looking for.

Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.

The equally is a political theory, but no a practical politics.

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

No government can act in advance of the moral will of the people.

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.

Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.

We are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.

I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.

Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.

It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.

God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.

You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?

A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.

What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.

Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.

What was so terrible about grief was not grief itself, but that one got over it.

Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.

There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.

When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?

No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.

All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.

There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness.

Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.

For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that, I don't think I could go on living.

Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.

Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.

It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.

Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.

We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.

Books of quotations ... afford me one of the most undemanding but satisfying forms of reading pleasure.

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.

It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.

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