God, stay with me, let no word cross my lips that is not your word, no thoughts enter my mind that are not your thoughts, no deed ever be done or entertained by me that is not your deed.

In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.

A ready means of being cherished by the English is to adopt the simple expedient of living a long time. I have little doubt that if, say, Oscar Wilde had lived into his nineties, instead of dying in his forties, he would have been considered a benign, distinguished figure suitable to preside at a school prize-giving or to instruct and exhort scout masters at their jamborees. He might even have been knighted.

As an old man...looking back on one's life, it's one of the things that strikes you most forcibly-that the only thing that's taught one anything is suffering. Not success, not happiness, not anything like that. The only thing that really teaches one what life's about...is suffering, affliction.

I think that President [Dwight] Eisenhower was... did the most marvelous job in the war, not really a military job: a public relations job, and it was essential that there should be a public relations job done in the post that he had.

American Women: How they mortify the flesh in order to make it appetizing! Their beauty is a vast industry, their enduring allure a discipline which nuns or athletes might find excessive.

There's far more truth in the Book of Genesis than in the quantum theory.