“My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.”

if you’d ever had a grown-up daughter you’d know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her – well, it’s much better to pretend you’re the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.

They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.

It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.

When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I’m going to bring up my daughter so that she’s free and can stand on her own feet.

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain.

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.

A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

To have a body is to suffer. Does anyone with a body know peace? Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, “To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” When you seek nothing, you’re on the Path.

Should anyone attempt to deceive you by false expressions, and not be a true friend at heart, act in the same manner, and thus art will defeat art. [If you would catch a man let him think he is catching you.]

Savasana is being without was, being without will be. It is being without anyone who is.

I’m going to make a very bold statement: Hip-hop has done more than any leader, politician, or anyone to improve race relations.

If anyone asks me whether I like being a popular writer, I ask them whether they think I’d rather be an unpopular writer.

You make me happy, even when you’re awful. I would rather be with you – even the you that you seem to think is diminished – than with anyone else in the world.

Mama always taught her children that words were pretty, but anyone can talk. She said, pay attention to that man or woman who acted, who did, who performed. She taught us to trust in thing we could see, not that we heard.

It`s always worth while before you do anything to consider whether it`s going to hurt another person more than is absolutely necessary.