My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.
From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.
You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
Writing is the supreme solace.
Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.
No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity the clichTs that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. The conclusion is obvious you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.
Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the clinging affability that persons of rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not in the least conscious of any difference in station between them.
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories