I am quite sure that no friendship yields its true pleasure and nobility of nature without frequent communication sympathy and service.

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

To feel that one has a place in life solves half the problem of contentment.

The sense that someone else cares always helps because it is the sense of love.

To be faithful to your instincts and the impulses that carry you in the direction of the excellence you most desire and value ... surely that is to lead the noble life.

Always begin anew with the day just as nature does. It is one of the sensible things that nature does.

"Old times" never come back and I suppose it's just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year and that's better.

I look at the cake in my mother's arms and think: here stands the only person in the whole world who'd go to such trouble for fractious, ungrateful me.

Get you gone, you dwarf, You minimus of hindering knotgrass made, You bead, you acorn!

It's a war of attrition. If you have patience and a modicum of faith in yourself your chances are not too bad.

People who are insecure about themselves will avoid social comparisons that are potentially threatening to their self-esteem

Until he lost all his money, my father was a successful north London Jewish businessman. He was unusual among his immediate family in that he was enormously cultured and had an incredible library.

[Sometimes] I sit in front of my [gaming] console with my headphones on and I play. I love that. It's a nice form of escapism.

My look is either very baroque or very Zen – everything in between makes me itch.

When you get to heaven, you will wish you were in hell.

Morality has nothing to do with such a man as I am.

There is only one legend. That's me