Maths is at only one remove from magic.

Depression: the healthy suspicion that modern life has no meaning and that modern society is absurd and alienating.

There are essentially three types of people: those who love life more than they fear it, those who fear life more than they love it, and those who have no clue what I'm talking about.

A man shrinks or expands into the degree and nature of his ambition. Ambition needs to be cultivated and refined, and yet has no teachers.

Man first creates the universe in his image, and then turns round to say that God created man in his image... As Voltaire quipped, if God created man in his image, man has returned the compliment.

Wonder begets culture, which begets yet more wonder, and the end of wonder is wisdom, which is the state of perpetual wonder.

Our life is just as long or short as our remembering: as rich as our imagining, as vibrant as our feeling, and as profound as our thinking.

Love, like madness, can only fill the models that society makes available.

The problem with studying is that it gets in the way of education.

Love is like chickenpox. It's much worse when it comes late.

Of all funny things, truth is the funniest.

A mind without freedom, a life without liberty, is like a heart without love, a journey without a destination.

Confidence is providence

Truthful words are not beautiful beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive persuasive words are not good.

Fermat said he had a proof.

Character is the virtue of hard times.

And I knew I would nevr have that everything's-right-in-my-world feeling again.

To protect us from terrorism, we must have the best, absolutely the best gathering of intelligence anywhere in the world.

Your cousin might be a pretty face, but you, my darling, courageous, maddening, seductive, mysterious, wonderful Diana, you are the Duchess of Wakefield. My duchess.

I love working. I'm a workaholic and I'm really privileged for some of the jobs I get offered and so I just want to keep going.

We never really know what might be beside us or ahead, but most days we walk as if we do.