We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire.

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.

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.

We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.

When angels' tears do flood the earth, the gates of hell shall see rebirth. Wheh the demise of angels doth impend, the human boy shall meet his end' Halo -Alexandra Adornetto

Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.

Everybody's got the mindset that everything should be measurable.

Some cities have fallen into ruin and some are built upon ruins but others contain their own ruins while still growing.

In 2nd grade, a girl who was a friend of mine gave me a homemade valentine. Like, a real, handwritten one!

If you get a dog, take care of your dog! You can just not have a dog if you don't feel like taking care of one, it's very easy to not have a dog.

Schooling is what happens inside the wall of the school, some of which is educational. Education happens everywhere, and it happens from the moment a child is born-some say before-until it dies.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.