I can never see why people should be jealous. After all, youth isn't a matter of privilege, we all get the same share of it. Some people may be born at an easier time or be richer or more privileged than others, but that hasn't anything to do with be...
If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.
The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of str...
Since even the most fastidious among us can rarely escape hearing salacious local gossip, it is as well to enjoy what cannot be avoided.
Violent death erase[s] more than the semblance of life.
It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.
Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught, not because they told the one essential lie, but because they continued to lie about unimportant detail when the truth could have done them no harm.
(Did you love your wife) "I convinced myself I did when I married. I willed myself into the appropriate feelings without knowing what the appropriate feelings were. I endowed her with qualities she did not have and then despised her for not having th...
One does not kill to avoid social inconvenience.
What do you mean by sound government?' Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear and war and crime, a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth and resources, concern for the individual life.' Then we haven't got sound gove...
Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
