When I sit down to write a novel I do not at all know, and I do not very much care, how it is to end.

An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.

When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.

Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.

Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

Selflessness is humility. ... humility and freedom go hand in hand. Only a humble person can be free.

He had no idea how to deal with the staggering amount of grief he felt, so he looked to the sun and blinded himself with its light.

We laugh a lot. That's for sure. Sure beats the alternative, doesn't it?

Build on past successes, be grateful for what you do have, and know that this, too, shall pass. It's only for the now. Whatever we're facing, it's not forever.

The music of Bach is without doubt the most sacred gift to the world of art.

We know too much for one man to know too much.

The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.

When you love something, you get to know it. Then you feel the ownership and if it changes, you only love it as far as you know it because then you're like, "What is this?"

The weakest faith gets the same strong Christ as does the strongest faith.

For other great mathematicians or philosophers, he [Gauss] used the epithets magnus, or clarus, or clarissimus; for Newton alone he kept the prefix summus.