God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.