The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.

It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.

Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.

I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.

Yes, time can be buoyed by wordlessness, but it needs to be anchored in words.

I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

I'm reading a lot of scripts. It makes my career decisions in that sense much the same way I consume media.

When the waves are crazy, the land is prettier!

Listen to the voice of the earth.

Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome.

Selena Gomez. She’s a sweetheart, I met her a couple of times.