Captain Shotover: How much does your soul eat? Ellie: Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with.

In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as 1 percent of us could give physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.

Man's inhumanity to man is only surpassed by his cruelty to animals

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.

I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.

My heart, my heart, be whole and free: Love is thine only enemy.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.