A.P. Herbert Quotes

When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

In the great mass of our people there are plenty individuals of intelligence from among whom leadership can be recruited.

New discoveries in science and their flow of new inventions will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.

No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him.

Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.

You will expect me to discuss the late election. Well, as nearly as I can learn, we did not have enough votes on our side.

The joys of fishing are not confined to the hours near the water.

Even if security from the cradle to the grave could eliminate [all] the risks of life, it would [still] be a dead hand on the creative spirit of the American people.

The first and last frosts are the worst.

All progress and growth is a matter of change, but change must be growth within our social and government concepts if it should not destroy them.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere.

We cannot change ideas in the minds of men and races with machine guns or battle ships.

No public man can be just a little crooked.

The universe does not work by our rules

We must not be misled by the claim that the source of all wisdom is in the government.

In societies of low civilization, there is no money.

A function to each organ, and each organ to its own function, is the law of all organization.

A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.

A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel.

In literary art, as in the art of the architect, the painter, the musician, signs that the artist is thinking of his own achievement more than of his subject always offend me.

Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.

If we persist in our restless desire to know everything about the universe and ourselves, then we must not be afraid of what the artist brings back from his voyage of discovery.

It must be admitted that the conception of virtue cannot be separated from the conception of happiness-producing conduct.

If a thing can't go on forever, it will eventually stop.

Consumer: A person who is capable of choosing a president but incapable of choosing a bicycle without help from a government agency.

In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence.

Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God.

Eight Hours For What We Will is a major contribution to modern American working-class history and to the history of a changing American popular and mass culture.

Being a writer is a rather hazardous occupation and there is a horribly high rate of writers who barely have the money for the paper and pen they use for their craft.

Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past.

Envy not greatness: for thou mak'st thereby Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater.

Half the world knows not how the other half lies.

None is a fool always, everyone sometimes.

Take heede of still waters, the quick passe away.

That from small fires comes oft no small mishap.

The Wolfe must dye in his owne skinne.

Prosperity lets goe the bridle.

The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.

Shall I, to please another wine-sprung minde, Lose all mine own? God hath giv'n me a measure Short of His can and body; must I find A pain in that, wherein he finds a pleasure?

Hee that goes to bed thirsty riseth healthy.

Well may hee smell fire, whose gowne burnes.

A Dwarfe on a Gyants shoulder sees further of the two. [A dwarf on a giant's shoulder sees farther of the two.

Sundays observe; think when the bells do chime, 'T is angels' music.

Church bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, The land of spices; something understood.

Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise Their Master's flower, but leave it having done, As fair as ever and as fit to use; So both the flower doth stay and honey run.

A civil guest Will no more talk all, than eat all the feast.

Of the smells, bread; of the tastes, salt.

Destiny is always dark.

He pares his apple that will cleanly feed.