Say not always what you know, but always know what you say.

What Roman power slowly built, an unarmed traitor instantly overthrew.

He who seeks to terrify others is more in fear himself.

Nature has given the opportunity of happiness to all, knew they but how to use it.

To do nothing evil is good; to wish nothing evil is better.

Whoever desires is always poor.

[Jews were] fomenting a general plague on the whole world.

No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing.

Power call achieve more by gentle means than by violence.

Faber est suae quisque fortunae. Each man is the architect of his own fate.

Nothing is more annoying than a low man raised to a high position.

Human beings, as I know better than most, can get used to anything. Over time, even the unthinkable gradually wears a little niche for itself in your mind and becomes just something that happened.

I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is.

Writing. Is it a way to be remembered, or a need to become immortal?

The creative consequences of man's imaginative strivings may never make him whole; but they constitute his deepest consolations and his greatest glories.

City of Fallen Angels ended on a cliffhanger. That was equally loved and hated by my readership.

A glass of whisky in Scotland in the thirties cost less than a cup of tea.

Ponder, your comedies are woeful chaff: Write tragedies, when you would make us laugh.

I have many times been praised for my lack of animosity towards the Germans. It's not a philosophical virtue. It's a habit of having my second reactions before the first.

It is through states that the American people get the job done every day, often in spite of a deeply flawed bureaucratic federal government.

But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.