The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger. I am deep in the old man’s puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one.
…so Leola thought that a modest romance with a hero in embryo could do no harm – might even be a patriotic duty.
Love affairs are for emotional sprinters the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.
But what I knew then was that nobody-not even my mother-was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself in the surface.
Before she continued her search she sat in his revolving desk chair, and wept for the passing of time, and the necessary death of the well-loved, wise old man.
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books.
I was afraid and did not know what I feared, which is the worst kind of fear.
Sexual thrills are not all physical, and although Parlabane was an unlikely seducer, even on the intellectual plane, it was clear that his desire was, by this prolonged tickling, to bring me to an orgasm of the mind.
All real fantasy is serious. Only faked fantasy is not serious. That is why it is so wrong to impose faked fantasy on children….
But what I knew then was that nobody– not even my mother– was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.
He [Jesus] had a terrible temper, you know, undoubtedly inherited from His Father.
I seemed to be the only person I knew without a plan that would put the world on its feet and wipe the tear from every eye. No wonder I felt like a stranger in my own land.
You are certainly unique. Everyone is unique. Nobody has ever suffered quite like you before because nobody has ever been you before.
One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.
Wake up! Be yourself, not a bad copy of something else!
Never neglect the charms of narrative for the human heart.
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
I wish people weren’t so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.
You’ll go far. How do I know? Because life is goosing you so hard you’ll never stop climbing.
I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, but by putting the emphasis where I think it belongs.
On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.
Civilization rests on two things,” said Hitzig; “the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendidly civilized occasion be without both?
Canada was settled in the main by people with a lower middle-class outlook and a respect rather than an affectionate familiarity for the things of the mind.
Whether you are really right or not doesn’t matter it’s the belief that counts.
Whether you are really right or not doesn’t matter it’s the belief that counts.
The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights actors and audiences – a figure dreaded and occasionally comic but never welcome never loved.
Men who look young act young and everlastingly harp on the fact that they are young-but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution what would be excessive in their grandfathers-are the curses of the world.
If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creatures let him begin the long solitary task of perfecting himself.
The love of truth lies at the root of much humour.
As a general thing people marry most happily with their own kind. The trouble lies in the fact that people usually marry at an age when they do not really know what their own kind is.
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
If we seek the pleasures of love passion should be occasional and common sense continual.
A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is in fact a return to the idealized past.
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.
Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don’t know what they are conserving.
There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.