“Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.”

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don’t.

You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?

Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.

When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it.

To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.

Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.

The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.

I’d sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.

There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.

I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s because it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.

We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.

Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.

The only thing that matters is that you set a goal and you just dream, live, and fly.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.

You can only do so many things great, and you should cast aside everything else.

For only when you have become utterly dependent upon prayer and faith, only when all human possibilities have been exhausted, can you begin to reckon that God will intervene and work His miracles.

Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power.