If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

There is a great fulfillment when you commit your life to lifelong learning.

We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little bit of each other everywhere.

Commercial television has lowered the general standard of TV in an endeavour to get millions and masses of people to watch the advertising. But that is not the problem of the advertiser.

Writers . . . write to give reality to experience.

Obsession with self is the motif of our time.

Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

Seek truth from facts.

There is no defence against reproach, but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.

What this White House really needs is a chief of staff who can read Machiavelli in the original Italian.

Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature.