I prefer that laughter shall take me unawares. Only so can it master and dissolve me.

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.

Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.

To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.

When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.

The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.

I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.

Yeah, well, you believe what you want to. I live in the real world.

In times like these it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.

I can't remember any text of mine where I said that one should fight Hitler without violence; I'm not an idiot.

The person who lives life fully, glowing with life’s energy, is the person who lives a successful life.

The path to big, systemic change is collective action. That takes Sister Courage.

I've got a heart like a college prom. Each one I dance with seems the best of all.

We want to create these dramatic situations, whether they are real or not, to entertain audiences.

I found acting tough; it takes a lot out of you if you have no technique.

Dates and periods are of interest only to the student of musical history.

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.