Every generation is a secret society and has incommunicable enthusiasms, tastes, and interests which are a mystery both to its predecessors and to posterity.

People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins they wonder whether they are catching cold.

All progress is experimental.

The reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneath the oppressions of his age.

Learning is not easy, but hard; culture is severe. The steps to Parnassus are steep and terribly arduous.

Attack another's rights and you destroy your own.

Nothing is more injurious to the character and to the intellect than the suppression of a generous emotion.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Too much agreement kills the chat.

Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation.

Benevolence alone will not make a teacher, nor will learning alone do it. The gift of teaching is a peculiar talent, and implies a need and a craving in the teacher himself.

Those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world usually do.

In a society where the rights and potential of women are constrained no man can be truly free. He may have power but he will not have freedom.

It's important for me to treat a girlfriend with respect. My mum would be horrified if I behaved any differently - and I have sisters, and would hate for them to be treated badly by guys.

Death is the cure for all diseases.

It is really like a family. We are around each other more than we are around anybody else. The time we spend together, and the hard work we put in together, it is going to build a close team.

When your home is perfect, every plant in place, every piece of furniture suits the space completely - you've completed a task.

There is really quite an inherent danger in the traditional British view that the council of ministers and inter-governmentalism is your protection against the federalist superstate.

I would like to see America some day.

To be honest, the only thing I ever really wanted to be was a writer - since I read 'Charlotte's Web' as a child.

Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.