Giving is not at all interesting; but receiving is, there is no doubt about it, delightful.

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.

So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

Once you get to know your neighbors, you are no longer free, you are all tangled up, you have to stop and speak when you are out and you never feel safe when you are in.

The great and recurrent question about Abroad is, is it worth the trouble of getting there?

Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.

To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder.

The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts.

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals -- or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all.

Your life is a book. Everyone could read it.

I've only had two rules: Do all you can and do it the best you can. It's the only way you ever get that feeling of accomplishing something.

People know that I have adopted four principles in living my life: simple living, punctuality, hard work and prudence.

We rush for the stars as we crawl toward our graves.

Insecurity is miserable. That's the bottom line. We don't need it. We don't want it. And we really can live without it. So what would happen if we quite being accomplices in our own misery?

All our "most sacred affections " are merely prosaic habit.

I think the Internet shortens the distance between people, and that can often lead to inappropriateness.

I don't play a character. It's totally just an extension of myself.

Remember, the early '60s in London was something - which must have been like Berlin in the '30s when the arts flourished. You didn't have the differences in class, and so on.

The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch.