“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

To define is to limit.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

To lose one parent, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

A good friend will always stab you in the front.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.

Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.

I love to read. I wish I could advise more people to read. There’s a whole other world in books.

Reading makes all other learning possible. We have to get books into our children’s hands early and often.

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

It isn’t what the book costs. It’s what it will cost you if you don’t read it.

Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.