Roald Dahl

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.

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

However small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.

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.

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

I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

Man – a creature made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

The men who have furnished me with my greatest inspiration have not been men of wealth, but men of deeds.

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.

Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.