“We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, ‘What’s the good of doing anything?’ Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age.”

“I believe the present matters --- not the past! The past must go. If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it. We see it in exaggerated terms --- a false perspective.”

“Human curiosity. Such a very interesting thing. Think of what we owe to it throughout history. It is said to be usually associated with the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. But I should say really that the Greeks were the inventors of curiosity.”

“I should like to knock their silly heads together. What is the sense of laughing all the time? They are not saying anything funny.”

“Do you not realize, Hastings, that each and everyone of us is a complete mystery with layers. We each try to judge each other, but nine times out of ten, we are wrong.”

“Melchett said gloomily, 'Well, we know where we are -- or rather, where we aren't!''Where we aren't expresses it rather better, sir.”

“You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”