A complete assemblage of the smallest facts of human history will tell in the end.

History is a science, no more and no less.

Books delight us when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us inseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us.

All the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.

The ideal of progress, freedom of thought, and the decline of ecclesiastical power go together.

A library of wisdom, then, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it.

In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.

Books alone are liberal and free; they give to all who ask; they emancipate all who serve them faithfully.

Please bury me in the library With a dozen long-stemmed proses

Books appear to be the most immediate instruments of speculative delight.

To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy grades, the water, the soil, the air itself.

Then, in that case, all the rest, all that I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the rest before me now, in fact... O, give it up old chap! Sleep it off!

Whether I'm interested [in something] or not, step one is read the script and figure out if a character is someone I'd want to explore or not.

Although I don't take myself very seriously, I do take my work extraordinarily seriously.

To be a human being is to suffer. But it's the unnecessary suffering, it's the suffering that we visit upon one another, that really should be stopped.

American life is builded ... upon that fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior nineteen centuries ago ... [It] can not survive with the defense of Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?

I've got this horrible feeling that I'm one of those people who'll always have to flog their guts out to get anywhere.

Even when you are feeling down, you have to live your life positively, that way, happy days and happy feelings will come to you some day.

Strange that theory and practice so seldom should accord.

How can I be a gangster, if I worked for the KGB? It is absolutely ridiculous.

All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.