I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.

To think too much is a disease.

I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility.

Man is fond of reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys.

There was so much to say that we said nothing.

A woman to a man is as a fragrance to a flower. When fragrance disappears, flower becomes valueless.

In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king's death or upon the identity of his successor.

If I honour my needs first, I will be the best wife, the best mum, the best sister, the best friend. I have to come first, because then everyone benefits.

To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly larger regions of space and time is science.

Revenge is never the best driver for a battle, but a common one.

Truth is the only healthy place from which to speak. Assumption is the birthplace of godless chatter.

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them.

If you're hooked on the physical act of writing, there's a good chance of your hanging in there long enough to say what you were born to say.

Collaboration is no longer painful - or precious.