“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons.

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.

The other damned saw what was happening and caught hold of it too. She was indignant and cried, “Let go-it’s my onion,” and as soon as she said, “my onion,” the stalk broke and she fell back into the flames.

Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “…There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.

She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.

It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

There are moments when the inner life actually ‘pays,’ when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.

Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.

One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.

My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is ‘Lord, I disbelieve – help thou my unbelief.

You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.

Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.

Every time I slip into the ocean, it’s like going home.

The most important thing at Daytona is, are you going to have friends willing to work with you during the race as far as drafting?

Either you are extrovert or introvert, and so I am an introvert in that sense. I’m not a social person that wants to go to parties.

When the players go home, I can’t tell them what to do, so you need to create an atmosphere of trust. I don’t want to think, ‘What are they doing now? Do I need to call them?’

You aren’t going to find anybody that’s going to be successful without making a sacrifice and without perseverance.

I don’t want to go out there and do something 3,000 other people can do.

But the other guys that you have have to accept their leadership. They have to respond to it. That’s the chemistry that you never know how that is going to happen.

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.