The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.

It's not the work or the personality of the founder of a religion that's important, but what its followers do with what they learn.

I just felt that if I went into Speed 2, I just... wouldn't have come up out of the water.

One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.

One of the most important factors in life, politics and war, to which historians tend to devote too little attention, is sheer luck, good or ill.

The most dangerous place is in your safety zone.

I'm fascinated that people drawn to cults want to know what to do. And people want to know what to think. And people want to know how to feel. Not just what to feel but how to feel.

Fools are the only folk on the earth who can absolutely count on getting what they deserve.

It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. Oh, and women too of course, bless their empty little heads.

... the best way to own common stocks is through an index fund.