Modern science, then, so far from being an enemy of romance, is seen on every hand to be its sympathetic and resourceful friend, its swift and irresistible helper in its serious need, and an indulgent minister to its lighter fancies.

All myths that are something more than fancies gain rather than lose in value with time, by reason of the accretions of human experience.

All religions have periods in their history which are looked back to with retrospective fear and trembling as eras of persecution, and each religion has its own book of martyrs.

It is the fine excesses of life that make it worth living.

The beauty we love is very silent. It smiles softly to itself, but never speaks.

We have, of course, long since ceased to think of Nature as the sympathetic mirror of our moods, or to imagine that she has any concern with the temporal affairs of man.

Wild oats will get sown some time, and one of the arts of life is to sow them at the right time.

It is curious how, from time immemorial, man seems to have associated the idea of evil with beauty, shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly fear, while, at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnotic attraction.

Modern science, then, so far from being an enemy of romance, is seen on every hand to be its sympathetic and resourceful friend, its swift and irresistible helper in its serious need, and an indulgent minister to its lighter fancies.

If Romeo and Juliet make a tragedy of it nowadays, they have only to blame their own mismanagement, for the world is with them as it has never been before, and all sensible fathers and mothers know it.

Though actually the work of man's hands - or, more properly speaking, the work of his travelling feet, - roads have long since come to seem so much a part of Nature that we have grown to think of them as a feature of the landscape no less natural than rocks and trees.

A wholesome oblivion of one's neighbours is the beginning of wisdom.

Perhaps we too seldom reflect how much the life of Nature is one with the life of man, how unimportant or indeed merely seeming, the difference between them.

We are all treading the vanishing road of a song in the air, the vanishing road of the spring flowers and the winter snows, the vanishing roads of the winds and the streams, the vanishing road of beloved faces.

We also maintain - again with perfect truth - that mystery is more than half of beauty, the element of strangeness that stirs the senses through the imagination.

A woman's beauty is one of her great missions.

Youth, however, can afford to enjoy even its melancholy; for the ultimate fact of which that melancholy is a prophecy is a long way off.

More and more the world is growing to love a lover, and one has only to read the newspapers to see how sympathetic are the times to any generous and adventurous display of the passions.

Be it whim or emergency, the modern laboratory is equally at the service of romance, equally ready to gratify mankind with a torpedo or a toy.

On the contrary, woman is the best equipped fighting machine that ever went to battle.

The spiritual element, the really important part of religion, has no concern with Time and Space, temporary mundane laws, or conduct.

In their work, then, as in their play, men and women are more and more coming to share with each other as comrades, and really the fun of life seems in no wise diminished as a consequence.

Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder's than any other agency in the world.

Races and nations are thus ever ready to believe the worst of one another.

There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, that gives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousy of goodness and greatness and things of good report.

All roads indeed lead to Rome, but theirs also is a more mystical destination, some bourne of which no traveller knows the name, some city, they all seem to hint, even more eternal.

Nature is forever arriving and forever departing, forever approaching, forever vanishing; but in her vanishings there seems to be ever the waving of a hand, in all her partings a promise of meetings farther along the road.

The road recedes as the traveler advances, leaving a continuous present.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

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.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!

Sure, I get the blues. But what I try to do, is apply joy to the blues, you know? I don't know if it's a technique, or just being bent that way, being raised by the folks I was raised by.

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.

The judge turned his back towards me, sitting back on his judge's chair, while I was in the witness stand being questioned. The whole courtroom was full of these anarchists, leftists, communists and Jewish lobbyists.

For me, being in front of the camera and training go hand in hand.

I define success as being comfortable with yourself and your life. And that is about as good as it gets, really.