The loveliest face in all the world will not please you if you see it suddenly eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch from your own.

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.

Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.

To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.

When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.

The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.

I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.

One thing I’ve learnt about humans: you can’t judge their strength by the size of their actions, but by the devotion of an act, no matter how small.

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything

When the Lord's request comes, will remove all other demands.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance one cannot fly into flying.

There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss.

I would love to produce a film.

Irish Alzheimer's: you forget everything except the grudges

My need is for safety, fun and to have distribution of resources, a sustainable life on the planet. NVC is a strategy that serves me to meet these needs.

It may be important to write a book that doesn't come up to what I would like to have rather than to write no book at all.

Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home.