“To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.”

A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

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.

Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

Bohr’s influence on the physics and the physicists of our century was stronger than that of anyone else, even than that of Albert Einstein.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

I had only that one picture, Hitler, the Beast of Berlin, in which I had a part big enough to impress anyone.

That’s good news and the church should offer it wholeheartedly to anyone.

It’s more fun with someone who really likes it. I can’t imagine having a lasting friendship with anyone who is not interested in food.