Roald Dahl

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.

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.

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.

If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.

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.

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

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

People of great position are servants times three, servants of their country, servants of fame, and servants of business.

The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

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

We are apt to love praise, but not deserve it. But if we would deserve it, we must love virtue more than that.

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

Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

We are all alike, on the inside.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

Logic is like the sword

All those moments are alive in us today. We may not visit them anymore, very often, but we carry them in our DNA, our blood, our bones; informing the breadth and beauty of who we now are; our lesson to be lived.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.