A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.

Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.

Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

We may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.

While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

Create a paradise anywhere you go.

The Bible doesn't speak of "women's rights" in the social-political language we're used to hearing today. Still, that doesn't mean the Bible is silent on the subject.

I feel what I sing, and I sing what I feel. Really, that's all I can do.

My driving force is spirituality.

I was shooting one day and it struck me that I was the age that Shirley MacLaine was when she played my mother. I had to sit down. I had to get a chair, okay? It was a weird moment.

I think it would be great for football in Britain if Pep Guardiola wins leagues and dominates for a while with the way he likes to play and the players he'll bring in.

It is true if you believe it to be true.

It's estimated that by 2030 there will be virtually no unskilled jobs in the British economy.

Irish readers, British readers, American readers: is it odd that I haven't a clue about how differently they react? Or better say, I cannot find the words to describe my hunch about them.

The corset is?a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitalityand rendering her permanentlyand obviously unfit for work.