I love my mother, but there has been, ever since my boyhood, a sort of coldness of intercourse between us, such as is apt to come between people of strong feelings.
The image we have of a famous person often bears no relation to them.
Stephen Fry is a master exponent of the English tongue. Some people might think that he is the most irritating man in Britain, but my wife and I love him all the same.
I can't establish the veracity of what people say because only they know whether they are telling the truth. I can't look into your mind, can I?
The three most dreaded words in the English language are 'negative cash flow'.
I'm not terribly technological. I'm awfully backward about iPads and BlackBerries and suchlike; I still have a great fondness for Teletext, and I clung onto my fax machine for as long as I could, but eventually you have to move with the times.
Chairman Mao not only introduced Pinyin in China, but also simplified half the Chinese characters, believing that fewer strokes would enable more people to learn to write the characters.
Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.
I like cluttered, old, dark-wood antiques. I like character.
One can never study nature too much and too hard
A good boss makes his men realize they have more ability than they think they have so that they consistently do better work than they thought they could.