“News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.”

There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.

Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

Don’t hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.

To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.

For in that city -New York; there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen.

I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.

It is a curious thing. That every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

To understand all is to forgive all.

Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.

It is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.

Here I am,’ I thought, ‘back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here, where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity.

You don’t remove the evil in a person by killing the person.

You’re hard to please: so many friends and so few cares, and can’t make yourself content.

As an actress, you go where the stories are. I don’t really care where it’s seen, at this point. I just want to tell good stories and do good roles that I haven’t done before.

Careful with this one. She had dethroned kings.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

You shouldn’t feel unsafe walking to school. It’s where you should feel safe. Our parents should feel their children are going to be taken care of, looked after.

If you listen carefully enough to anything, it will talk to you.

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

Who would ever care to do brave deed, Or strive in virtue others to excel, If none should yield him his deserved meed Due praise, that is the spur of doing well? For if good were not praised more than ill, None would choose goodness of his own free will.