Life is too short for a long story

Civility costs nothing, and buys everything.

There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes all the happiness of life.

People wish their enemies dead - but I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone!

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked.

There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.

The ultimate end of your education was to make you a good wife.

There can be no situation in life in which the conversation of my dear sister will not administer some comfort to me.

I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.

Solitude begets whimsies.

Dead people are just great. Meet me when you are.

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.

People's trust in their public institutions depends on their government getting results.

The moment artists can just do what they love to do then music will go right back to where it used to be. I mean back in the '60s and '70s and '80s, that's what it was.

Fifty percent of the world are women, yet they always seem a novelty.

I don't see why we and the Chinese should have to be enemies.

I like shelves full of books in a library, but if all books become electronic, the task of big research libraries remains the same - keep what's published in the form in which it appeared.

Let's look on the bright side: we're having an adventure, Fezzik, and most people live and die without being as lucky as we are.

All work and no play may make Jim a dull boy, but no work and all play makes Jim all kinds of a jackass.

On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, Musing in solitude, I oft perceive Fair trains of images before me rise, Accompanied by feelings of delight Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed.