“For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change.”
“Manners are love in a cool climate.”
“If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.”
“It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.”
“Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.”
“When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?”
“It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style.”
“The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.”
“The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy they want to be right.”
“Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.”
“Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.”
“There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.”
“My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.”
“The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.”
“Men get laid, but women get screwed.”