Never ask of money spentWhere the spender thinks it went.Nobody was ever meantTo remember or inventWhat he did with every cent.

Life is mostly froth and bubble,

Adam Lindsay Gordon

Deep versed in books and shallow in himself.

John Milton

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

Sir William Temple

I loathe people who say, 'I always read the ending of the book first.' That really irritates me, It's like someone coming to dinner, just opening the fridge and eating pudding, while you're standing there still working on the starter. It's not on.

J.K. Rowling

For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

Theodore Roosevelt

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.

Martin Amis

There is no problem more difficult to solve than that created by ourselves.

Felix Alba-Juez

I always want to know what's wrong with you, why you ain't smiling. That's just my character; I just love people and want to see people having a good time.

Wyclef Jean

Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

Maya Angelou

I learnt pity, sympathy, and what it was like to be at the other end of the stick. Such lessons can't be learnt in lecture halls.

Lionel Blue