“A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.”

To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.

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

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.

The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.

I’d sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.

There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.

I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s because it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.

It’s no good trying to keep up old friendships. It’s painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Now the answer … is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.

Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well

I don’t care how busy I am – I will always make time for what’s most important to me.

When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

All the instruments of percussion known to European science are essentially nonmusical and can only be tolerated in open air music or in large orchestras where a little noise more or less makes no difference.

A thought often makes us hotter than a fire.

Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.

Truly, there is a Christian note which makes the whole World vibrate, like an immense gong, in the divine Christ. This note is unique and universal, and in it alone consists the Gospel.

Foreign players is what makes golf so popular now.

I don’t want to do business with those who don’t make a profit, because they can’t give the best service.