“Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.”

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.

You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?

Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.

Your friends are all the dullest dogs.

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!

In heaven an angel is no one in particular.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Youth is wasted on the young.

The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.

I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health.

The person who takes no chances generally has to take whatever is left when others are through choosing.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It’s not having no responsibilitie s; it’s choosing the ones you want.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.