Quotes from Stephen Fry

Writing allows us to listen to the past and speak to the future.

We know how wars that each side believed would soon be decided can stretch out over months and years. The Greeks and Trojans were perhaps the first to discover this unhappy truth.

How strange is our mortal zest for fame. Perhaps it is the only way humans can be gods. We achieve immortality not through ambrosia and ichor but through history and reputation.

Heracles listened to Laomedon's self-pitying and largely fabricated version of the events leading up to Hesione's sacrifice.

Hear me proclaim this, you loathsome turd from the ass of Typhon.

What did we see last night?" he asked. "It wasn't warfare. It was madness. Deception, savagery, dishonor, and disgrace. What have the mortals become?" "Terrible, isn't it? Who do they think they are—gods?" "There's a time for humor, Hermes, and this isn't it," said Apollo.

We'll spare your life, I promise," hissed Odysseus. "Only speak quickly. And quietly. I have shaky hands and this blade against your throat might just slip and find its way into your windpipe if you aren't quick, clear, and concise.

So perhaps we are all hypocrites. We damn others for what we fear as faults in ourselves. We rehearse the shortcomings of 'people' as a means of warding off the evil spirits that threaten us. It is certainly observable that those who most notice another's excessive drinking, for instance, are those most worried about their own habit.

Some are born with a beauty that seems to turn people mad. Fortunately there are very few of us like that, but our power can be unsettling and even eruptive.

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it. That is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing — an actor, a writer — I am a person who does things — I write, I act — and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

people are not capable of being evil, they are only capable of evil; that is the crucial difference that allows repentance and forgiveness

Which of us can't honestly almost sob with joy when spring happens? You see that once again these leaves are being pushed out of dead branches, and blossoms, and insects are flying towards them is this fantastic process going on. And somehow we've allowed ourselves to feel outside it as if we are special. We've given ourselves a god like status, which is very dangerous I think, and very foolish.

No, blasphemy only threatens those whose faith in their religion is weak

He can hardly dare to suggest anything if you thunder at him like that," said Odysseus. "Either you want him to speak or you want to terrify him into silence. You can't have both.

Humanists do not claim to know, we just ask you to be very wary of those who do claim to know. Who told them? What does their knowledge mean? Why should you trust them? Above all, don't take my word for it either. Don't take anyone's word for it. Find out for yourselves.

Given the intervention of the gods and other magical and supernatural happenings, I have—as mentioned in the Introduction that you so wisely skipped—thought it best to tell the story of the war and its aftermath without attempting to dot every sequential iota or cross every chronological tau.

They [the Catholic Church] thought that slavery was perfectly fine and then they didn't. And what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says: 'Oh well, we couldn't know better because nobody else did.' THEN WHAT ARE YOU FOR?!

taught him how to look into the hearts and judge the intentions of others. How to imagine and how to reason. How to find the strength to let passions cool before acting. How to make a plan and how to know when a plan needed to be changed or abandoned. How to let the head rule the heart and the heart win the affection of others.

Oh, to be in England, now that England's gone. This World Service, this little bakelite gateway into the world of Sidney Box, Charters and Caldecott, Mazawattee tea, Kennedy's Latin Primer and dark, glistening streets. An

It is your fate to be Heracles the hero, burdened with labors, yet it is also your choice. You choose to submit to it. Such is the paradox of living. We willingly accept that we have no will." This was all a touch too profound for Heracles. He saw, but did not see. In this he shared the same bemusement on the subject of free will and destiny that befuddles us all.

He had just reached the pavement and gave now the smallest, quickest of glances back up the hill, in our direction. Our eyes didn't meet, but I saw that he was even more beautiful than I had supposed. Even more beautiful than I had ever imagined it was possible to imagine imagining beauty. Beautiful in a way that made me realise that I had never even known before what beautiful really meant: not in people, nature, taste or sound.

El futuro prometedor es como una piedra preciosa, hipnotiza pero, luego de un tiempo, su peso podría hundirte.

Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word's full octave.

To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.