The public is a bad guesser.

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.

In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.

Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

All that is literature seeks to communicate power

Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!

There is a necessity for a regulating discipline of exercise that, whilst evoking the human energies, will not suffer them to be wasted.

Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.

Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear.

As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored.

I want my girls to be strong and self-sufficient.

The spider is the chamberlain in the Palace of the Caesars The owl is the trumpeter on the battlements of Afrasiyah.

The truth is lots of films are made, the majority of which are terrible.

I happen to be a guy who also plays the piano and sings, so people automatically associate me with Billy Joel.

If you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.

Something worth doing is something worth putting your heart into.

I'm convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you're less safe when you give up your liberties.

They asked me when I was out there, 'Why do you want to be traded?' I said me staying here is like divorcing my wife and marrying someone who looks like me. That's backwards, man.

All the things that happen to people in the industry today, the actors, what they have to put up with, all the people wanting to know every single moment of their lives - I think it's really sad.