But facts always convince, and another man's opinion rarely convinces.

An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.

When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.

Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.

Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

One of these grand defects, as I humbly conceive, is this, that children are habituated to learning without understanding.

Sometimes all you know about where you're going is that it's away from where you are.

Poetry is an extra hand. It can caress or tickle. It can clench and fight.

It can be here today and gone tomorrow.

Throughout American history, there have been moments that call on us to meet the challenges of an uncertain world, and pay whatever price is required to secure our freedom.

I can do anything I want, I'm eccentric!

Being moderate with oneself and generous with others; this is what is meant by having a just relationship with money, by being free as far as money is concerned.

It's a sin for a writer to go looking for camels to put into his or her pages. I only want details that are the story.

All physical systems can be thought of as registering and processing information, and how one wishes to define computation will determine your view of what computation consists of.

God made nightButMan made darkness.