“In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me.”

It is sad and wrong to be so dependent for the life of my life on any human being as I am on you; but I cannot by any force of logic cure myself at this date, when it has become second nature.

Instead of boiling up individuals into the species, I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality, and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity.

People who are so dreadfully “devoted” to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people’s wives as well.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.

The less one does, as I long ago observed, the less one can find time to do.

A fashionable wife! Oh! Never will I be anything so heartless! I have pictured for myself a far higher destiny than this. – Will it ever be more than a picture?

On earth the living have much to bear; the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best.

Homeopathy – an invention of the Father of Lies! I have tried it and found it wanting. I would swallow their whole doles medicine chest for sixpence, and be sure of finding myself neither better nor worse for it.

I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for.

The longer one lives in this hard world motherless, the more a mother’s loss makes itself felt.

Cracked things often hold out as long as whole things; one takes so much better care of them!

Young children are such nasty little beasts!

Not a hundredth part of the thoughts in my head have ever been or ever will be spoken or written — as long as I keep my senses, at least.

I rely on the promise, God is kind to women, fools, and drunk people.

The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it.

How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not – have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy these, then, and bless God that we are permitted to enjoy them, rather than importune His goodness with vain longings for more.

You can have your own watch and always doubt it. If I had a watch I’d probably always be doubting it or the batteries would be dying. I just know that people always have trouble with their watches, and that’s why I like public clocks.

Whereas when you go to New York and you audition for plays, you walk out sweaty and intimidated and nervous and doubting yourself as an actor.

If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.

If you spend your life living in fear or doubt, you will never actually live life, and will only be coexisting with the rest of the world.

What if?’ history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day – including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery – believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.

I doubt anybody would have pushed me [on the music]. When I was at Sony nobody ever gave me any creative suggestions on the music.

In your discipline, if doubt comes, let it come. You do your work and let doubt carry on with its work. And let us see which gives up first!

One life to live, live it to the fullest. If you have doubts or your gut feeling says something, listen. Don’t waste time, time will waist u.