The most effective teacher will always be biased, for the chief force in teaching is confidence and enthusiasm.

A foul-mouthed oaf, a drunken laborer lying in a drain, a beaten wife with blackened eyes and torn clothes, cannot be made romantic to a child who sees how other children suffer from bad-tempered parents, from drunken fathers to termagant mothers.

The most effective teacher will always be biased, for the chief force in teaching is confidence and enthusiasm.

It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

I write the big scenes first, that is, the scenes that carry the meaning of the book, the emotional experience.

Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends. Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.