“Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship’s captain has to avoid a shipwreck.”

I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt.

The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.

To lie about a far country is easy.

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother.

One sometimes weeps over one’s illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.

The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius.

Breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.

Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.

We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs… of our barbarous ancestors.

Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.

Of all the passions, the only one that seems respectable to me is the passion for food

Military men are the scourges of the world.

Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It’s the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.

We are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at.

Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror.

I felt pride, wonderful pride, when I was captain. It was an honour to take over from Labby. Anybody who has ever captained a big club, which Everton are, will tell you it’s a great honour.

A boat can’t have two captains.

You got to tell me the brave captain Why are the wicked so strong? How do the angels get to sleep When the devil leaves the porch light on?

The way this whole novel thing came together was, I sold them one bill of goods and then didn’t communicate very well. I am like Captain Run-on Sentence.

The soul is the captain and ruler of the life of morals.

Opportunity is the best captain of all endeavor.

I am the captain of my destiny, I do not abandon the ship in hard times, But, I do have sense enough not to go down with the ship.

To this day, one of my proudest achievements is captaining my country.