Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.
It is lost, lovely child, somewhere in the ragbag that I laughingly refer to as my memory.
When a man is down on his luck he seems to consume all he can get of coffee and doughnuts.
If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
The pleasures of love are for those who are hopelessly addicted to another living creature.
She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.
The division between art and deviousness and crime is sometimes as thin as a cigarette paper.
"There is no disputing about tastes," says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.
I just am a Canadian. It is not a thing which you can escape from. It is like having blue eyes
It seemed to me as if the stones sang, in the strangest voices, in the language of Ultima Thule.
On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.
In the end, it is upon the quality and commitment of individuals that all group movements depend.
Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.
Inactivity and deprivation of all accustomed stimulus is not rest; it is a preparation for the tomb
To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.
The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live.
Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.
I still have trouble identifying grammatical structures by name, though I know them as matters of usage.
Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.
It is a waste of time to dissipate one's moral zeal in disapproving of royal persons who have mistresses.
Nobody who looks as though he enjoyed life is ever called distinguished, though he is a man in a million.
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.
Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.
I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them.
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life.
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
You're all mad for words. Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books. Give me things!
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular.
Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.
The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline.
Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it.
You would not serve junk food at a banquet, and your book must be a banquet. Get your language from Swift, not from Shopsy's.
He types his labored column - weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.
All real fantasy is serious. Only faked fantasy is not serious. That is why it is so wrong to impose faked fantasy on children.
There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.
There are times when I think that the reading I have done in the past has had no effect except to cloud my mind and make me indecisive
The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.
Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.
And why should it not be terrifying? A little terror, in my view, is good for the soul, when it is terror in the face of a noble object.
Pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars.
If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creature s let him begin the long, solitary task of perfecting himself.
Every man makes his own summer. The season has no character of its own, unless one is a farmer with a professional concern for the weather.
I was not sure I wanted to issue orders to life; I rather liked the Greek notion of allowing Chance to take a formative hand in my affairs.
All art is holy. Not that it is all long-faced and miserable; it can be wild and wooly. But if it transforms you, it is art. And it is holy.