[On Dutch flat poetry]: It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like butter-milk gurgling from a jug.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that but the really great make you feel that you too can become great. When you are seeking to bring big plans to fruition it is important with whom you regularly associate. Hang out with friends who are like-minded and who are also designing purpose-filled lives. Similarly be that kind of a friend for your friends.

Good judgment comes from experience. And where does experience come from? Experience comes from bad judgment.

You can't no more teach what you ain't learned than you can come from where you ain't been.

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom.

I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him.