But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do.

The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.

Alcoholic drinks, rightly used, are good for body and soul alike, but as a restorative of both there is nothing like brandy.

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.

The hardest thing to attain... is the appreciation of difference without insisting on superiority.

It is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times.

I do not think anything serious should be done after dinner, as nothing should be before breakfast.

When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.

When [wines] were good they pleased my sense, cheered my spirits, improved my moral and intellectual powers, besides enabling me to confer the same benefits on other people. (Notes on a Cellar Book)

But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy.

Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.

...at dawn, the grains of sleep turn to floating black spots, then out of focus the world tilts, and the cat scratches at the door...

Come on up, boys-I'm dead.

The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.

The former ruling class kept the community of actors in ignorance by means of various lies.

When you trust your director completely, then you can relax, be spontaneous, be malleable.

It is impossible to add the stock of money to the flow of saving.

I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick.

Like a twisted olive tree in its 500th year, giving then its finest fruit, is man. How can he give forth wisdom until he has been crushed and turned in the Hand of God.

I just want to give people the best album that I possibly can.

What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.