My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

The secret of success is constancy of purpose.

Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.

Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.

Never complain and never explain.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Dreamers dream the dream, Artists live it.

Bad mind, bad heart. (Mals Mens, Malus Animus

As long as the plots keep arriving from outer space, I'll go on with my virgins.

Genius is one of the many forms of insanity.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

Carve not upon a stone when I am dead, The praises which remorseful mourners give; To women's graves - a tardy recompense, But speak them while I live.

'You all righ'?' he said gruffly. 'Yeah,' said Harry. 'No, yeh're not,' said Hagrid. 'Of course yeh're not. But yeh will be.'

I lived five years in Portugal and then spent winters in Nepal or India.

When novels deal in abstractions, they generally go off the rails.

Artists work best alone. Work alone.