Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The moment one begins to solder right and wrong together, one's conscience becomes like a piece of plated goods.
.... "death turns all men into great lovers. Would that they were equally ardent while the lady was still alive!
The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.
Sinners often speak the truth. And saints have led people astray. Examine what is said, not the one who says it.
Life: a constellation of vital phenomena—organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.
If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there's no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.
A man has many parts, he is virtually everything, and you are free to select in him that part which pleases you.
Here is my secret. It is very simple: one sees well only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.
If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself.
To lose one's self in reverie, one must be either very happy, or very unhappy. Reverie is the child of extremes.
Nothing good ever happens by itself - it is achieved through striving, though this sometimes bears a high price.
Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.
If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.
Religion helps you relate with the universe. Buddha was indifferent to the concept of god yet he gave us values.
I have noticed several times that people don't think I know how to behave even when I'm trying as hard as I can.
...and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.
If you don’t define yourself for yourself then you will be crushed into other's fantasies of you and eaten alive
I remember, no matter how impossible it seemed that any given day would end, it always did. This one would, too.
Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.
You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.
And of course, the answer came to me in the same way Jesus comes to those who drink in trailers: as an epiphany.
It is with flowers as with moral qualities; the bright are sometimes poisonous; but, I believe, never the sweet.
Everything foreign is respected, partly because it comes from afar, partly because it is ready made and perfect.
No man can teach another self-knowledge. He can only lead him or her up to self-discovery - the source of truth.
Quotes are like cayenne pepper or some other strong spice: a little goes a long way, and too much is a disaster.
Medicine is a very tough thing. I mean, everyone is going to die. Sooner or later. That's a tough thing to face.
True greatness is devoting all my energy to becoming a servant and not getting upset when I am treated like one.
A photograph is a picture and no more true or false than any other depiction; why is that so hard to comprehend?
I write literary biographies, so above all, I have to love the subject's books. But choosing a subject is tough.
Writing teaches writing. Your writing will teach you how to write if you work hard enough and have enough faith.
I suffered a stroke in 2002 that made everything else in my life that happened to that point pale in comparison.
You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided we'd know each other a long time.
I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.
I really like language - and slang in particular, and just the shorthand we use when we communicate with people.
After ten years of toiling away in Hollywood, I realized that there's no better place for new ideas than comics.
I've always thought of fantasy as a genre of best-case scenarios, and horror as a genre of worst-case scenarios.
Poetry is an exhibit of one pendulum connecting with other and unseen pendulums inside and outside the one seen.
I am the people the mob the crowd the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work. I am the grass. I cover all.
The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
Vegetarianism is an act of the imagination. It reflects an ability to imagine alternatives to the texts of meat.
When the friends we love the best Lie in their churchyard bed, We must not cry too bitterly Over the happy dead.
There is a green hill far away, Without a city wall, Where the dear Lord was crucified, Who died to save us all.
The eternal sound of the sea on every side has a tendency to wear away the edge of human thought and perception.
Love is a volcano, the crater of which no wise man will approach too nearly, lest ... he should be swallowed up.
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.
Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.
Some financial advisers say anyone who may move in less than seven years should not take out a reverse mortgage.
If I write too much of anything for too long, I burn out on it. So it helps to vary my output from year to year.