Actor

Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.

I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.

A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many hearts lost to her.

To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.

I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.

All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.

People are either born hosts or born guests.

The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.

Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.

There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.

To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.

The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.