There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.

Knowledge is power only if man knows what facts not to bother with.

I sometimes suspect that half our difficulties are imaginary and that if we kept quiet about them they would disappear.

Most of us can remember a time when a birthday - especially if it was one's own - brightened the world as if a second sun has risen.

[History is] the story of the magnificent rear-guard action fought during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity.

Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.

Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.

Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us.

The telephone is the greatest nuisance among conveniences, the greatest convenience among nuisances.

When the last Puritan has disappeared from the earth, the man of science will take his place as a killjoy, and we shall be given the same old advice but for different reasons.

Most remarks that are worth making are commonplace remarks. The things that makes them worth saying is that we really mean them.

Leave it to women to be cryptic rather than straightforward

All approaches to a study or an individual may start with a desire for attention. However they start, they must never end up in this manner.

A wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.

It remained an open question, how much sympathy love could stand.

All good is born in prayer, and all good springs from it.

The only way we come back as a country is to build the domestic economy.

Wood's not natural mulch for a woodland garden. Do you see forest trees shatter into a zillion pieces and fall? No. They fall, then decompose, then spread.

Nothing great ever came out of common sense.

Love means tearing down the separateness and the boundaries between your heart feelings and another person.