Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician.

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.

Elena rolled her eyes. "Oh, please, Guy. Everything immortal has to be killed somehow. I mean, you can't survive if they cut off your head.""Want to give it try?

'Bombay Velvet' is my most romantic film, it's my 'Titanic' or 'Gone With The Wind.'

I prefer that for my own satisfaction over radio, there's no audience. TV, there's no audience. I need the response of the audience, even if it's a silent response.

The essence of success is that it is never necessary to think of a new idea oneself. It is far better to wait until somebody else does it, and then to copy him in every detail, except his mistakes.

I want to create an experience with my music.

You come back to the beginning. That's why in the "Searching for the Ox" sequence, at the very end of that sequence of the Zen paintings, we're back in the world again.

Take a nap Making the mountain water Pound the rice.

Time is not kind to everything.

Pardon me, dear human self, capable of the most heinous degradation, capable of soaring.

The habits and language of clandestinity can intoxicate even its own practitioners.