“The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.”

Esteem must be founded on some sort of preference. Bestow it on everybody and it ceases to have any meaning at all.

Love is a great master. It teaches us to be what we never were.

No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk.

It is a long road from conception to completion.

That must be fine, for I don’t understand a word.

Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.

I prefer a pleasant vice to an annoying virtue.

I prefer an interesting vice to a virtue that bores.

The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.

Cover that bosom that I must not see: souls are wounded by such things.

Isn’t the greatest rule of all the rules simply to please?

Without dance, a man can do nothing.

The ancients, sir, are the ancients, and we are the people of today.

Perfect reason avoids all extremes.

What a terrible thing to be a great lord, yet a wicked man.

I want people to be sincere; a man of honor shouldn’t speak a single word that doesn’t come straight from his heart.

For humans, the Arctic is a harshly inhospitable place, but the conditions there are precisely what polar bears require to survive – and thrive. ‘Harsh’ to us is ‘home’ for them.

In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.

I will not allow a Delia Smith cookbook in my house! It’s all so precise with Delia, and it makes cooking seem so inaccessible.

The precise place where you would expect to see the least.

I’m not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.

Differ though we might with Christianity’s view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis.

I’m very analytical, I’m very precise.

I’m very analytical, I’m very precise. I mean, I don’t write for kids.