“It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don’t.

You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?

Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.

When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it.

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.

And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.

She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love.

A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.

Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.

You don’t have to deal with anyone in America. They accept you the way you are.

I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant.

Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who…have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies.

Accept what is good. Reject and forget what is not. This is intelligent living.