The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
He was the most inconsiderable creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of...
Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half an hour’s meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance. And it r...
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.
Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsen...
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
It was a pity that with his great qualities, his unselfishness and honor, his intelligence and sensibility, he should be so unlovable.
Irony is a gift of the gods, the most subtle of all the modes of speech. It is an armour and a weapon; it is a philosophy and a perpetual entertainment; it is food for the hungry of wit and drink to t...
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.
Monsieur Foinet got up and made as if to go, but he changed his mind, and, stopping, put his hand on Philip's shoulder.But if you were going to ask me my advice, I should say: take your courage in bot...
It was a cold morning, and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his uncle that his prayers were more acceptable to God if he said them in his nightshirt than if he waited till he was dresse...
Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other a...
You can never know enough about your characters
It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: i...
A sensible person does not read a novel as a task. He reads it as a diversion. He is prepared to interest himself in the characters and is concerned to see how they act in given circumstances, and wha...
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.