Who would venture upon the journey of life, if compelled to begin it at the end?

There is an important difference between love and friendship. While the former delights in extremes and opposites, the latter demands equality.

three-fourths of all marriages are unhappy.

It is with many enterprises as with striking fire; we do not meet with success except by reiterated efforts, and often at the instant when we despaired of success.

Contempt is the only way to triumph over calumny.

Pleasure and pain, the good and the bad, are so intermixed that we can not shun the one without depriving ourselves of the other.

Sin is not so sinful as hypocrisy.

Delicacy is to love what grace is to beauty.

Philosophy may raise us above grandeur, but nothing can elevate us above the ennui which accompanies it.

Woman softens her own troubles by generously solacing those of others.

Hope says to us constantly, "Go on, go on..."

What he did to my heart was sheer, inexplicable, magic.

Only later, much later, too late, did I understand how small she (Mrs Winterson) was to herself. The baby nobody picked up. The uncarried child still inside her.

When we talk to God, we're praying. When God talks to us, we're schizophrenic.

That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.

We're all real people with moments of intense honesty and pathos and humanity. We all experience that, whether you're comedic or not.

A modern gentleman [rich person] is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner.

The only reason Toronto is no longer the dullest city on earth is that it is no longer full of Anglo-Canadians. It is full of Hong Kong Chinese. And not a few Italians.

Rights are subordinate to responsibilities.

We have [in Valerian] a bible that's 600 pages. There are five pages on each alien and where they come from. Even the address you can check on the map. On the star map. It's real numbers.

Open your eyes, I'm a BLESSING in disguise