True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose.

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools.

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.

And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from?

I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!

For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence.

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain.

If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day.

My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing.

Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.

Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.

You'll drift apart, it's true, but you'll be out in the open, part of everything alive again.

Being a practiced liar doesnt mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all its that which gives their lies such wide eyed conviction.

All good things pass away.

People are too complicated to have simple labels.

A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.

Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.

From heav'nly thoughts all true delight doth spring.

I had gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking round with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below.

There is no spot of ground, however arid, bare or ugly, that cannot be tamed into such a state as may give an impression of beauty and delight.

Books should to one of these fours ends conduce, for wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

It is also very engaging - and a delight - to go back to Bangladesh as often as I can, which is not only my old home, but also where some of my closest friends and collaborators live and work.

There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.

We help people to begin truly healthful diets, and it is absolutely wonderful to see, not only their success, but also their delight at their ability to break old habits and feel really healthy for a change.

For Pleasure, Delight, Peace and Felicity live in method and temperance.

There is no delight in owning anything unshared.

She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.

It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear!

The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.

Not only is there no need of an intermediary through whom He would want you to speak to Him, but He finds His delight in having you treat with Him personally and in all confidence.

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.

Intelligence is nothing without delight.

To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.

Look at Christ, my dear friend: His life was divine through and through, full of self-denial, and He did everything for mankind, finding His satisfaction and His delight in the dissolution of His material being.

And so my militant philosophy is this: to make with a brush on canvas is a simple direct delight-to make with the movie is the same.

The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.

Not only that, but when I first met Joe, to my intense delight, he showed me that he was a collector. He was collecting some of the early Tarzan pages by Hal Foster, and, later, early Flash Gordons; and I found that we were both absolutely interested in the same type of thing.

LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.