Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.

If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don't you think?

Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.

Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.

People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?

But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.

It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.