“Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.”

By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men’s souls.

Public opinion’s always in advance of the law.

We are not living in a private world of our own.

Slang is vigorous and apt. Probably most of our vital words were once slang.

When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing – deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.

Dawn has power to fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision.

Such was not quite the condition of Timothy’s on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy’s soul still had one foot in Timothy Forsyte’s body, and Smither kept the atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and house whose windows are only opened to air it twice a day.

It isn’t enough to love people because they’re good to you, or because in some way or other you’re going to get something by it.

Honesty of thought and speech and written word is a jewel.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don’t say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage!

The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk . . .

Justice is a machine that, when some one has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself.

Love is not a hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind.

Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies.

Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place – service – social service – the ants creed, the bees creed.

Music stimulates within us direct experience of expanded reality

In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.

In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.

We have found a direct correlation between grit and positive emotions, but the fact that I have no evidence that grit is bad for you doesn’t mean it’s not. It’s always a possibility that in the future researchers will discover a downside to grit.

The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.

When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.

I now talk to different cultures, and I hope that I can bridge those gaps and differences between us. It’s an adventure, a dream…

How defeated and restless the child that is not doing something in which it sees a purpose, a meaning! It is by its self-directed activity that the child, as years pass, finds its work, the thing it wants to do and for which it finally is willing to deny itself pleasure, ease, even sleep and comfort.