People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.

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.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

I always knew I wanted to do it [broadcast]. I was always playing [sports] and I talked a lot too.

It's amazing how much you can get done if you don't worry about who gets the credit.

Even the worst neighborhood of Heaven will be better than the best neighborhood of the fanciest town on Earth!

In a place like the Guggenheim, I would like to be a representative of arte povera. This would be my ideal.

There can no longer be anyone too poor to vote.

People don't realize the limitations of 200 words, and the way they get chiselled down into a song that has to be sung.

We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.

There is always someone out there working harder than you, and you may be standing next to him or her in your next competition.

It is man's foremost duty to awaken the understanding of the inner self and to know his own real inner greatness. Once he knows his true worth, he can know the worth of others.