Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

To survive, you must tell stories.

But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

When you think in silence you cannot speak your mind.

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.

This is for you. A mage named Randal told me to give it to the Band if you ever came back. 'It surmounts evil,' he told me, 'keeps doom at bay.'

Life isn't always fair, lass, but that doesn't mean it can't still be sweet."- Dageus

Beyond the natural numbers, addition, multiplication, and mathematical induction are intuitively clear.

When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do towards other humans.

the task of each family is also the task of all humanity. This is to cherish the living, remember those who have gone before, and prepare for those who are not yet born.

A musk deer searches for the source of the fragrance of musk, but it won't find it because the fragrance comes from within itself. Bliss is not to be found outside of us; it exists within us.

Silence is the eternal duty of man.

I was pretty much grown-up by the time I attended school in Britain - or as grown-up as I'll ever get.