Roald Dahl

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

There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t started wondering about yet.

The more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury.

Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.

I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be a phony.

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

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a threadball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains on the thrower.

Standing on the doorstep of desire, I hold this bouquet like a gun and these vows like a petition for the death penalty.

Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Love truth, but pardon error.

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.

It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

Don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem!

Injustice in the end produces independence.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

Opening amenities are often opening inanities.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.