I'm in the business of providing people with secondary satisfactions. It wouldn't have done me much good if they had all written their own plays, would it?

A loving wife will do anything for her husband except stop criticizing him and trying to improve him.

Western man is schizophrenic.

If there is one thing left that I would like to do, it's to write something really beautiful. And I could do it, you know. I could still do it.

On the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinates per se [mercury oxide]; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. … I admitted water to it [the extracted air], and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame… I was utterly at a loss how to account for it.

Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument.

We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.