No one can depute authority. It comes too much from personal accidents, and too little from reason or law to be handed over to others.

An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.

When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.

Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.

Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

leaders don't watch but make things happen-initiate change

Will you have the courage to obey the voice of God?

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Once an old woman at my church said the secret is that God loves us exactly the way we are and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this, and I'm just trying to trust that.

Sometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority.

Tea Party has now cost the Republicans 5 senate seats. My next donation is going to them.

The patriots of 1776 had far more to fear from Benedict Arnold than they did King George. An enemy easily identified is much less formidable than one who marches in the uniform of an ally.

There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness.

Horror movies scare me. I don't really watch them. I'm not a big horror genre fan. I like certain classic horror - like 'Alien', 'Jaws', 'The Exorcist', stuff like that.

I picked up reading late because I grew up dyslexic. When I went to college, a friend who was a big reader got me started on a number of writers, including Hemingway.