Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When you and I are inclined to nestle down in indolence and self indulgence. God "stirs up our nests" and bids us fly upward.
The vast majority of fiction is written to markets and to this damnable business we have nowadays of categorizing everything.
When Time who steals our years away Shall steal our pleasures too, The mem'ry of the past will stay, And half our joys renew.
The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily.
Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.
I'm glad to be able to announce that the UK now has it's very own mindless twit. || Either that or he's a damn good satirist.
I'm an old Catholic. I don't believe in anything Catholic but I do believe that Catholicism keeps me from committing suicide.
A picture book is a small door to the enormous world of the visual arts, and they're often the first art a young person sees.
It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.
My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh.
Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches. Cool to warm. So is the progression from childhood to old age.
I won a prize for 'best sponge cake' at the Clacton Festival 2005. Having said that, I was only up against three other cakes.
Tell the world you are a one-of-a-kind creation who came here to experience wonder and spread joy. Expect to be accommodated.
It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work.
By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.
I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them.
Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?
Facts must be manipulated; some must be brightened; others shaded; yet, in the process, they must never lose their integrity.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them.
The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries.
I wrote for magazines. I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for the 'National Enquirer,' I wrote advertising copy for cemeteries.
Can you become The hope I need? Can you help me be More than it is written in my future Or past? Is there another me to find?
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
Men command fewer words than they have ideas to express, and language, as Jean Paul said, is a dictionary of faded metaphors.
Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.
We know that it is possible to harness desire to many interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it.
The difference between a rich man and a poor man is this--the former eats when he pleases, and the latter when he can get it.
I never did a single wise thing in the whole course of my existence, although I have written many which have been thought so.
The habit of pleasing by flattery makes a language soft; the fear of offending by truth makes it circuitous and conventional.
Gentle words, quiet words, are after all the most powerful words. They are more convincing, more compelling, more prevailing.
The quality an artist must have is objectivity in judging his work, plus the honesty and courage not to kid himself about it.
The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...
Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.
A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.
Terrible and sublime thought, that every moment is supreme for some man and woman, every hour the apotheosis of some passion!
You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond existence as mere clients and consumers - those people ride a bike.
People who don't believe in God are no happier than people who do, and those who do believe are no nicer than those who don't.
My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.
For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.
People who do not need to please are irresistible because they radiate wholeness, a rare delicacy in a world of hungry hearts.
Happy people do not demand a lot from the world because their happiness proceeds from a place deeper than the world can touch.
Rummy is one of the easiest of all card games to learn. More people understand the rules of Rummy than of any other card game.
But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.
If the Prince of Peace should come to earth, one of the first things he would do would be to put psychiatrists in their place.
This really revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in the souls and flesh of human beings.
When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.