“Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?”

Frequent the company of your betters.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.

Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them.

There is a skeleton in every house.

Under the magnetism of friendship the modest man becomes bold; the shy, confident; the lazy, active; and the impetuous, prudent and peaceful.

Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.

Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?

If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.

The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.

All is vanity, nothing is fair.

One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.

Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.

It is a friendly heart that has plenty of friends.

When I say that I know women, I mean I know that I don’t know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as, I have no doubt, she is to herself.

The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books – how not to eat what you’ve just learned how to cook.

Mary is the Mysterious Book of Predestination to glory.

While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people they finally dropped it from judo.

I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests’ books.

We do not consider our principles as dogmas contained in books that are said to come from heaven. We derive our inspiration, not from heaven, or from an unseen world, but directly from life.

I was reading Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’. It’s one of my favourites.

A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books.

A good book is an event in my life.