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

Life calls the tune, we dance.

The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and the sniff.

Once admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary suffering and you destroy the very basis of human society.

It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.

The French cook; we open tins.

Men are in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those inventions create.

Society is built on marriage … marriage and its consequences.

It is by muteness that a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace, where words play no torturing tricks.

Beauty means this to one person, perhaps, and that to the other. And yet when any one of us has seen or heard or read that which to us is beautiful.

Under its influence, wholly or in part, have blossomed weekends, strong nerves, strong legs, strong language… equality of sex, good digestion and professional occupation – in four words, the emanicipation of women.

A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild!

And they who curb prejudice and seek honorably to know and speak the truth are the only builders of a better life.

He was afflicted by the thought that where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which no doubt, was why so many people looked on it as immoral.

I drink the wine of aspiration and the drug of illusion. Thus I am never dull.

Those are the moments that I think are precious to a dog-when, with his adoring soul coming through his eyes, he feels that you are really thinking of him.

Essential characteristics of a gentleman: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he would himself recoil; and the power to do what seems to him to be right without considering what others may say or think.

But when I felt like I had something to prove? Then I got up early every morning and worked all day long. I didn’t know if I had any more talent than anyone else directing, but I knew I could work hard at it, and so I did.

There are times when I am directing, and there are a couple of moments I didn’t get the way I wanted, but I know I still have other angles to shoot and I have to be done by noon; I move on.

It’s always better to speak the language of the team. Not only for the direct contact with everyone.

Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

Russia has cultivated an opaque network of patronage across the region that it uses to influence and direct decision- making.

Once you discover that you can, then you must. And it’s not easy. You have to take direct steps.

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.