It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?

A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.

Big or small, be ready to do your part when you dare to dream and you will be rewarded with success from the Universe.

I wasn't used to looking ahead. Not like Jack. Maybe that was why he had that ready grin. I could see through the dust, but he could see through time, and he didn't even need magic to do it.

I don't understand "The Little World of the Past" [a reference to the title of the book by Antonio Fogazzaro] that is destined to die.

A man without God is not like a cake without raisins; he is like a cake without the flour and milk; he lacks the essential ingredients.

I was brought up to believe that Scotch whisky would need a tax preference to survive in competition with Kentucky bourbon.

By genocide we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.

Acting, the arts in general, is a magnet for the wounded of society.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.

The intention which is fixed on God as its only end will keep people steady in their purposes, and deliver them from being the joke and scorn of fortune.

The thing that interests me is the good and evil in everybody. I don't have conventional heroes in the films that I directed, because I believe there's good and evil in everybody.