A blaze first pleases and then tires the sight.

Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Happiness is a journey, not a journey's end.

That wasn’t blood. It was love. It pours out of you when you lose faith.

As he drank, little brown drops of coffee clung to his mustache like dew. Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone.

The thrill, believe me, is as much in the battle as in the victory.

When I see a woman who looks her age, she's radiating something, and it's life.

There is a primacy of each individual object. And we'll see! That's the whole point of making sculpture, to present a question in a physical form to people.

We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened.

You and only you are responsible for your life choices and decisions.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.