What lasts in the reader's mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what's it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.

It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.

There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.

In life, people will take you at your own reckoning.

The final end of Eternity, and the beginning of Infinity

The whole world might know you and acclaim you, but someone in the past, forever unreachable, forever unknowing, spoils it all.