Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library.  This book I had again and again perused with delight.

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

Conventionality is not morality.

Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.

If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.

It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you.

And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.

Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.

His overactive charm poured out like a lone drainage pipe after a flash flood.

Whose merchants are princes.

There's no right or wrong, success or failure.

I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it's true that I am, by nature, belligerent.

When the people you love are gone, you're alone.

This is why I had children: to offer them a perfect dream of childhood that can fill their souls as they grow older.

When it comes to staying tuned: if you rest, you rust.

Theists and atheists are equally religious.

How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can't argue with them. That's their perception.

However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.