There is one regard in which bullies show real perception when compared with their victims; it is their silent good-natured pleasure of the moment.

All excellence is equally difficult.

Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.

Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.

The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows.

The dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they let go hold of the earth . . . and the ambitions they had . . . and the things they suffered . . . and the people they loved. They get weaned away from the earth - that's the way I put it - weaned away.

The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.