Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self-pity. Self-pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self-pity and not the other way around -' It destroys everything around it, except itself '. Self-pity will destroy relationships, it'll destroy anything that's good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And it's so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice. I think it's one of things we find unattractive about the American culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like Americans and I love being in America. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self-pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. It's an appalling spectacle, and it's so self-destructive. I almost once wanted to publish a self-help book saying 'How To Be Happy by Stephen Fry : Guaranteed success'. And people buy this huge book, and it's all blank pages, and the first page would just say -' Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy '. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and that's what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like 'Oh that's so simple', because it's not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, it's what Genesis is all about.

— Stephen Fry

Cheat? Good heavens, this is an amateur cricket match amongst leading prep schools, I'm an Englishman and a schoolmaster supposedly setting an example to his young charges. We are playing the most artistic and beautiful game ever devised. Of course, I'll cutting well cheat. Now, give me my robe and put on my crown. I have immortal longings in me.

— Stephen Fry

Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.

— Stephen Fry

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

— Stephen Fry

Compromise is a stalling between two fools.

— Stephen Fry

Either a municipal bog is a private place or it isn't. If it is a private place in which to shit, how is it not a private place in which to fell ate?

— Stephen Fry

Entirely in accordance with what education is supposed to be. Education is the sum of what students teach each other in between lectures and seminars. You sit in each other's rooms and drink coffee - I suppose it would be vodka and Red Bull now - you share enthusiasms, you talk a lot of wank about politics, religion, art and the cosmos, and then you go to bed, alone or together according to taste. I mean, how else do you learn anything, how else do you take your mind for a walk?

— Stephen Fry

Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use?

— Stephen Fry

Great writers, I discovered, were not to be bowed down before and worshiped, but embraced and befriended. Their names resounded through history not because they had massive brows and thought deep incomprehensible thoughts, but because they opened windows in the mind, they put their arms round you and showed you think you always knew but never dared to believe. Even if their names were terrifyingly foreign and intellectual sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire or Cavalry, they turned out to be charming and wonderful and quite unalarming after all.

— Stephen Fry

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.

— Stephen Fry