The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story.

The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.

Alcoholic drinks, rightly used, are good for body and soul alike, but as a restorative of both there is nothing like brandy.

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.

The hardest thing to attain... is the appreciation of difference without insisting on superiority.

It is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times.

I do not think anything serious should be done after dinner, as nothing should be before breakfast.

When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.

When [wines] were good they pleased my sense, cheered my spirits, improved my moral and intellectual powers, besides enabling me to confer the same benefits on other people. (Notes on a Cellar Book)

But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy.

But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do.

With patient endurance, the best of life enfolds.

In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men's underwear.

What a child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow.

My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend that all's certain and good, that the marriage won't end.

A testimony is a testimony, and it should be respected, whether it is small or large.

If you are happy, happiness will come to you because happiness wants to go where happiness is.

You either are or you're not.

When you're making a film, you have an obligation to fill the frame with life.

The more one loves, the heavier the meaning of death becomes, and the deeper the sense of loss. Love and death are not different things, they are the front and back of the same thing.

Sometimes things don't turn out the way you want them to, Haven. Sometimes the people you choose to believe are wrong.