"The greatest deception is forgetting that authenticity is the rarest and most beautiful asset."

"But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy."

"In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause."

"More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us."

"Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't."

"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

"The older generation had greater respect for land than science. But we live in an age when science, more than soil, has become the provider of growth and abundance. Living just on the land creates loneliness in an age of globality."

"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."