Man as a pure animal does not exist.

And for mathematical science, he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of hellebore.

I reckon I closed down at least two films companies, one of which was in Ealing in the mid 1950s.

But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.

Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.

All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty; for beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.

To an intellectual who is adrift in politics, a theory is an aim; to a true politician his theory is a boundary.

A merry companion is as good as a wagon.

Something like The Haunting is not worth the slightest consideration from me.

My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.

People get depressed and get attracted to different types of memes. You can trace some of this to how the biological hierarchy is set up.

The will is what matters – as long as you have that, you are safe.

Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.

Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

All men wish to have truth on their side; but few to be on the side of truth.

Justice is the sum of all moral duty.

There is no logical reason why humanity could not be organized as a society, or as a purely economic enterprise, or as a vast book club.

Pessimism only describes an attitude, and not facts, and hence is entirely subjective.

It may not be impossible, but that our Faculties may be so construed, as always to deceive us in the things we judge most certain and assured.

I wanted to write a story that demanded the viewer’s attention.

To him it is an ocean, unfathomable, and without a shore.

Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man.

Deliberately seek opportunities for kindness, sympathy, and patience.

To the fantastic mental illness of Rationalism, hard facts are regrettable things, and to talk about them is to create them.

I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.

If you wish to be brothers, let the arms fall from your hands. One cannot love while holding offensive arms.

One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.

Take male strategies for success in the world. If you’ve got all the advantages, if you’re attractive and clever and all of that, you will generally go for very high quality females.

There is no place in my soul, no corner of my character, where God is not.

To find a man’s true character, play golf with him.

Certainly, it isn’t a ghost story where people go into a haunted house. There have been two or three made on that basis, but I didn’t want to do that.

To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.

What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.

A moment’s reflection shows that Liberalism is entirely negative. It is not a formative force, but always and only a disintegrating force.

Politics is activity in relation to power.

That though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility, there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry.

I’d never seen any television before I started.

There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness.

Celebrities are nowhere as rich as some people think they are.

Do not be scrupulous and think it selfish. You are obeying God’s call and giving Him the opportunity to teach you what He wants you to know.

With the passing of the Age of Materialism, the West knows once more that the development of an organism is the unfolding of a soul.

She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say “when.”

A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.

There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.

Towards my husband, I often fail to show interest in his affairs and amusements, not rousing myself to respond when I’m tired or concerned with other things, forgetting he is very patient with me.

I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

All stories should have some honesty and truth in them, otherwise you’re just playing about.

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.

Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions.

A political theory seeks to find from history the limits of the politically possible.