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

The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.

It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.

From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.

In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They’re both very good things.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.

What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.

Oh, it’s always the same,’ she sighed, ‘if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

Hoping to instill my love of learning in other children.

People, instead of competing, they can actually support each other, in music.

There are lots of different interpretations of the word ‘prodigy.’

So my mother set the foundation for my appreciation for nature and my empathy for other people.

Someone who plays all the instruments and teaches others.

I was speaking to Ridley Scott the other day and he makes a film every 18 months. He’s amazing really.

Almost indeed as atheists, for they denied the very existence of other gods.

We all love people who give credit to others for their success.