Every politician is emphatically a promising politician.

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

Theology is only thought applied to religion.

Around every corner is another gift waiting to surprise us, and it will surprise us if we can achieve control over our natural tendencies to make comparisons [to things that are better rather than things that are worse], to take things for granted [rather than imagining how much worse things would be if they weren't there and so feeling grateful], and to feel entitled!

Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age.

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.