Roald Dahl

I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.

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.

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

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

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

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

There is a hush over all Europe, nay, over all the world. Alas! it is the hush of suspense, and in many lands it is the hush of fear. Listen! No, listen carefully, I think I hear somethingyes, there it was quite clear. Dont you hear it? It is the tramp of armies crunching the gravel of the paradegrounds, splashing through rain-soaked fields, the tramp of two million German soldiers and more than a million Italiansgoing on maneuversyes, only on maneuvers!

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

In heaven an angel is no one in particular.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.

One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

Nothing is black or white.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.