Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.

Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.

It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.

I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.

Nobody ever died of laughter.

You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.

When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.

I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

People are either born hosts or born guests.

To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.

No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.

Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.

You will find my last words in the blue folder.

The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.

One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.

There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.

Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.

A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many hearts lost to her.

Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.

As a teacher, as a propagandist, Mr. Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.

It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait.

All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.

Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

Most women are not as young as they are painted.

To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.

Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.

The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

Have you ever noticed there is never any third act to a nightmare? They bring you to a climax of terror and then leave you there.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

I liked Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and that is the kind of character that I would like to have played. That would have been more in tune with who I really was.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character.

The more we study the Indian's character the more we appreciate the marked distinction between the civilized being and the real savage.

So many people have said that to me, that what they really like about Alex is what she brings out in Marissa, and what this situation brings out in her, a hint of happiness and another side to her character.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.