Roald Dahl

Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted. He lived happily ever after.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you’ll be free if you truly wish to be.

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Every old poem is sacred.

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

A great man is always willing to be little.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

Pity the man who has a character to support – it is worse than a large family – he is silent poor indeed.

You don’t get respect if you don’t deserve it

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in a number of grimy intellectual households in Greenwich Village.

Religion is nothing else but love of God and man.