To my mind the most poignant mystical exhoration ever written is "Be still and know that I am God."

A man of sixty has spent twenty years in bed and over three years in eating.

The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.

I think it rather fine, this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it is to be the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire.

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

The only way to write a great book is to write it with the eyes of a child who sees things for the first time.

You can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas . . . You cannot make bricks without straw.