Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.

The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.

Alcoholic drinks, rightly used, are good for body and soul alike, but as a restorative of both there is nothing like brandy.

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.

The hardest thing to attain... is the appreciation of difference without insisting on superiority.

It is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times.

I do not think anything serious should be done after dinner, as nothing should be before breakfast.

When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.

When [wines] were good they pleased my sense, cheered my spirits, improved my moral and intellectual powers, besides enabling me to confer the same benefits on other people. (Notes on a Cellar Book)

But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy.

But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do.

Whatever God does today will be as significant as the parting of the Red Sea.

The woman seems ready to be pleased with the world.

If all else fails immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

There aren't a lot of situations where I look back and I say, The decision I actually made or the course we actually pursued was the wrong course.

You must lose everything in order to gain anything.

I like playing that character who brings love to people, who puts people in a place where they're apt to encounter love.

I'd worked so hard that by the time I was 20, I wanted to play hard. And I did that really well.

If the ingredients for happiness are not within a person, no material success or entertainment or platinum credit cards can make that person smile.

Indian films are always very passionate and romantic, and so long as the scene is done well aesthetically, I have no qualms doing it.

I just loved being around everybody. We just found a rhythm with each other that you want to get on everything you ever do in your life.