"As cedars beaten with continual storms, So great men flourish; and do imitate Unskilful statuaries, who suppose, In forging a Colossus, if they make him Straddle enough, strut, and look big, and gape, Their work is goodly: so men merely great In their affected gravity of voice, Sourness of countenance, manners' cruelty, Authority, wealth, and all the spawn of fortune, Think they bear all the kingdom's worth before them, Yet differ not from those colossic statues, Which, with heroic forms without o'erspread, Within are naught but mortar, flint and lead."

"I will neither yield to the song of the siren nor the voice of the hyena, the tears of the crocodile nor the howling of the wolf."

"Let pride go afore, shame will follow after."

"Fair words never hurt the tongue."

"Enough 's as good as a feast."

"Only a few industrious Scots perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on 't, in the world, than they are. And for my own part, I would a hundred thousand of them were there [Virginia]; for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here."

"Make ducks and drakes with shillings."

"Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee. Light gains make heavy purses. 'Tis good to be merry and wise."

"Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools."

"Fortune, the great commandress of the world, Hath divers ways to advance her followers: To some she gives honour without deserving, To other some, deserving without honour; Some wit, some wealth,—and some, wit without wealth; Some wealth without wit; some nor wit nor wealth."

"How blinde is pride! what eagles we are still In matters that belong to other men, What beetles in our own!"

": What flowers are these? : The pansy this. : Oh, that's for lover's thoughts."

"I tell thee Love is Nature's second sun, Causing a spring of virtues where he shines."

"Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair In that she never studied to be fairer Than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing, Her virtues were so rare."

"Music, and mood, she loves, but love she hates (As curious ladies do, their public cates), This train, with meteors, comets, lightenings, The dreadful presence of our empress sings: Which grant for ever (O eternal Night) Till virtue flourish in the light of light."

"Great goddess, to whose throne in Cynthian fires, This earthly altar endless fumes expires; Therefore, in fumes of sighs and fires of grief, To fearful chances thou send'st bold relief, Happy, thrice happy type, and nurse of death, Who, breathless, feeds on nothing but our breath, In whom must virtue and her issue live, Or die for ever."

"Promise is most given when the least is said."

"Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies. The gods on murtherers fix revengeful eyes."

"Love me? Love my dog!"

"Let no man value at a little price A virtuous woman's counsel; her wing'd spirit Is feather'd oftentimes with heavenly words."

"For one heat, all know, doth drive out another, One passion doth expel another still."

"Virtue is not malicious; wrong done her Is righted even when men grant they err."

"Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams, That waking breaks, and fills us with extremes."

"O incredulity! the wit of fools, That slovenly will spit on all things fair, The coward’s castle, and the sluggard’s cradle."

"Berenice's ever-burning hair."

"None ever loved but at first sight they loved."

"Use makes things nothing huge, and huge things nothing."

"Obscurity in affection of words and indigested conceits is pedantical and childish."

"Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'."

"It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval."

"I want so much to cling to something solid and steady."

"In fact, the real problem with the thesis of A Genealogy of Morals is that the noble and the aristocrat are just as likely to be stupid as the plebeian. I had noted in my teens that major writers are usually those who have had to struggle against the odds — to "pull their cart out of the mud," as I put it — while writers who have had an easy start in life are usually second rate — or at least, not quite first-rate. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Shaw, H. G. Wells, are examples of the first kind; in the twentieth century, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett are examples of the second kind. They are far from being mediocre writers; yet they tend to be tinged with a certain pessimism that arises from never having achieved a certain resistance against problems."

"Barbara wrote that his brain frightened her. It was sharp and clear and cruel. She admired him for being always unsentimental, but noted 'always remember to rely on yourself … if you are in a sticky place he will be so interested in noting your reactions that he will probably forget to rescue you.'"

"Greene, we agreed, is a Jekyll and Hyde character, who has not succeeded in fusing the two sides of himself into any kind of harmony. There is conflict within him, and therefore he is liable to pursue conflict without."

"Graham Greene is unique-a questing lucidity that no other writer in the English language can come near. Why hasn't he got the Nobel Prize? We have all learned so much from him, as writers and readers."

"At the end of what is called the "sexual life" the only love which has lasted is the love which has everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship."

"Can you hate something you don't believe in? And yet he called himself a free-thinker. What an impossible paradox, to be free and to be so obsessed."

"Under my cloak, a fig for the King!"

"There's a virtue in slowness, which we have lost"

"Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and the simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt."

"It was not the kind of surroundings in which any one with free will — if such a man existed — would have chosen to await death."

"Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong."

"Simplicity belonged by right to those who were native-born, those who could take the conditions of life, however bizarre, for granted."

"It was an evening which, by some mysterious combination of failing light and the smell of an unrecognised plant, brings back to some men the sense of childhood and of future hope and to others the sense of something which has been lost and almost forgotten."

"God...created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed — that is the meaning of evolution."

"I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It’s the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate."

"Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully."

"There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives."

"Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism … is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politique....Catholics and communists have commited great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate...if you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?"