Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

The Bagshaws? They didn't know she was a nun!

Do not allow your daughters to be taught letters by a man, though he be a St. Paul or St. Francis of Assissium. The saints are in Heaven.

People ... have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be friends. Sooner or later you have to talk about each other's work.

Those who aim low usually hit their targets.

I don't know why my brain has kept all the words to the Gilligan's Island theme song and has deleted everything about triangles.

I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.

I think my ultimate directorial style is 'play.' In reference to theater, it's called a play - I believe in that noun, and the verb that goes with it.

I've worked with some great orchestras and amazing classical musicians, but I don't like the conceptualization of classical music as an elitist form of art.

Oh for god's sake. I'll just carry you.