“Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.”

I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan’t make the mistakes I’ve made.

I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you.

The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?

If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

You’re intoxicated by the boundless space.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care?

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly?

The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

I had no desire to be an film actress, to always play somebody else, to be always beautiful with somebody constantly straightening out your every eyelash. It was always a big bother to me.

I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself… something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.

From nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations

My definition of financial freedom is simple: it is the ability to live the lifestyle you desire without having to work or rely on anyone else for money.

No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.

More than anything else, I’d like to be an old man with a good face, like Hitchcock or Picasso.

First of all a natural talent is required; for when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place.

Everyone who believes in God must have His revelation in his spirit, or else what he believes is not God but mere human wisdom, ideals or words. Such faith cannot endure the test.