Hell is a half-filled auditorium.

I’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it’ll be much harder to detect.

I have more friends in New York than Paris.

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man’s, I mean.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.

Mine is better than ours.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

Particularly Instagram, people look like they have a much better life than they really do. People basically seem like they are way better-looking than they really are, and they are way happier-seeming than they really are.

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.

Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

In the United States, we can do almost anything we want. It’s not like Egypt, where you’re going to get murdered by the security forces.

As a British driver, you get compared to Lewis and I get that. But when he came to McLaren, they were doing well and had a championship-winning car. I’m in a very different situation so I don’t compare myself to his stats.

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

For as one star another far exceeds, So souls in heaven are placed by their deeds.

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

Language is wine upon the lips.

Clothes if they are not well cut, you can kill nobody. A building poorly built can kill people. It’s a much more difficult work. I would not compare myself with that.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.

Mobile is a lot closer to TV than it is to desktop.

Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians – you are not like him.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

When they speak, dead frogs fall out of their mouths.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.

Just as I wanted to outdo everyone when I played, I had to outdo everyone when we were out on the town.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

If you’ve spent a long time developing a skill and techniques, and now some 14 year-old upstart can get exactly the same result, you might feel a bit miffed I suppose, but that has happened forever.

I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

There is no injustice in the grace of God. God is as just when He forgives a believer as when He casts a sinner into hell.

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.