The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty.

We are also fortunate in being in quite a sheltered environment, in terms of people moving on to do other things, because there are relatively few companies in Scotland that are looking for the skill set that we've developed.

David Milne

What the vast majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered, stop being indulged, stop being chauffeured, stop being catered to. In the final analysis it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.

Ann Landers

When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.

V. S. Naipaul

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of despair.

Joseph Conrad

Look, when that crowd gets to cheering, when we know they're with us, when we know they like us, we play better. A hell of a lot better!

Bill Carlin

I've turned down jobs because I've said, 'Honestly, I can't find my way in. I can't do it. I love you, as a director. I think the script is good. You deserve better than I think I can do.'

David Duchovny

My biggest problem will be lack of match toughness but I am a positive, optimistic person.

Greg Rusedski

Nature is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. She is cunning, but for good ends. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. I trust her.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? Whats stronger- the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?

Jodi Picoult

The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else...was to be indifferent to that difference.

Al Capp, "Life (magazine)", May

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Walter Bagehot

The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.

Oscar Wilde