The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

People don’t want to be millionaires — they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.

I repeat... that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

So long as the opposing forces are at the outset approximately equal in numbers and moral and there are no flanks to turn, a long struggle for supremacy is inevitable.

If you raise taxes during a recession, you head to depression.

[P]hilosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

I'm old-school. I want to be there to drop off my daughter at school and pick her up.

Every authentic artist is engaged in this creating of the conscience of the race, even though he or she may be unaware of the fact.

Yesterday I told a chicken to cross the road. It said, "What for?"

You can't go around being what everyone wants you to be, living your life through other people's rules, and expect to be happy and have inner peace.