Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.

An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.

When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.

Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.

Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

It makes it easier to play evil and to act evil to people that you really like. You have a feeling about them, so you know what the opposite is.

To despise riches, may, indeed, be philosophic, but to dispense them worthily, must surely be more beneficial to mankind.

Never trust a woman who doesn’t like to eat. She is probably lousy in bed.

The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.

In the real world there's an after-effect of disappointment if you lose an argument. But if, to begin with, you're set up not to have this particular autonomy, then you're not disappointed.

The real payoffs you never understand. You should just give good people money and tell them to do good things.

...You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don't know whether you're going to jump.

We are not documentarians, we are filmmakers.

There is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man's face and another behind his back.

We've had the trivialization of our politics going on ever since we had electronic media.