His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

You will find the lies in the light and truth in the dark

Socialists and Progressives confuse compassion and compulsion.

Light-minded society mercilessly persecutes in reality what it allows in theory

There is greatness in everyone.What is your purpose on the earth?Use your unique gifts and talent to influence mankind.

You can't just go on being a good egg. You must either hatch or go bad!

My plans have always exceeded my capacities and energies

I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature.

Too many couples break up without understanding the consequences for their families.

Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress.

It is not important to be better than someone else, but to be better than yesterday.