There being in the make of an English mind a certain gloom and eagerness, which carries to the sad extreme; religion to fanaticism; free-thinking to atheism; liberty to rebellion.

All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth - in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world - have not any subsistence without a mind.

To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi)." Or, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.

It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.

Few men think, yet all will have opinions.

The world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes, and the round into the square.

I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.

That thing of hell and eternal punishment is the most absurd, as well as the most disagreeable thought that ever entered into the head of mortal man.

A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries.

So long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can be easily mistaken.

Your faith may be just a little thread. It may be small and weak, but act on that faith. It does not matter how big your faith is, but rather, where your faith is.

Only the poet can look beyond the detail and see the whole picture.

It was great to work in Ireland because it's such a beautiful country, but it's not particularly easy to film in because the weather changes all the time.

In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.

My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn’t believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I’m agnostic.

Tomorrow is your future's yesterday.

I make clothes people can wear; I don't make art.

Hospice means end-of-life care. The admission ticket is a diagnosis from a doctor that you have six months or less to live.

We will stand up for what is right, for what is fair and what is just. Health care is a right and not a privilege.

Any crusade requires optimism and the ambition to aim high