Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

Just finished 'Secrecy' - truly enthralling both as a love story and as a tale of suspense - but much more than both.

She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.

Imagination only fails us in the end, when the stories we tell ourselves have to stop.

I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.

You'll make mistakes because it's impossible to know what is or isn't a mistake until it's made.

Being a native of Spain, the country to which I owe much of my education and cultural background, I was deeply influenced by my great predecessor Santiago Ramon y Cajal.

I think that the candidates who are doing it [not debating] are doing a great disservice to the party. It's a sign of an unhealthy institution.

A test of your love for God is to examine your love for others.

O telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any sceptre!

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

I care not, a man can die but once; we owe God and death.