One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know.

I am, after all, a thriller writer. I routinely delve into the darkest chambers of the human heart. I've written about murder, kidnapping, depravity, horror, violence, and disfigurement.

Phychical pain is more easily borne than physical; and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former.

The honour is overpaid,When he that did the act is commentator.

He will always know as we know now that in the heat of battle he did not fail when mateship and duty called.

At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language.

Do not turn back when you are just at the goal.

Chocolate is the greatest gift to women ever created.

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

[It is not the purpose nor right of Congress] to attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require.