“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling.

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Whisky is liquid sunshine.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.

Imagination is the beginning of creation.

I think something many of us grapple with are those times we dread the practice of writing, no matter the project.

The burnt child dreads the fire.

The dread was built into the 2016 election – a little spoonful of dread.

Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need.

The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.

How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.

My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us.

My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us.