Literature was formerly an art and finance a trade: today it is the reverse.

God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.

When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.

Solitude vivifies, isolation kills.

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions.

A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.

Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions.

I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy.

Conscientious men are, almost everywhere, less encouraged than tolerated.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

In time the whole family perked up like Sesame Street puppets, hoping that cheer, if worked at hard enough, could sugar the living and quiet the dead.

He would be able to suffer what his son had suffered. He would be able to suffer and his suffering would for an instance displace his grief.

Your wealth of experience makes you rich. Spend it on hurt people. They need it so badly.

Words pale and lose their savor while pain is always new.

It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.

Let us prepare for that blessed day when He will come again. Let us be as wise as those ancients who watched for His coming.

Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge.

Too many people never connect with their true talents and therefore don't know what they are capable of achieving.

When you own a piano, it's harder to think about moving.