it isn't good tactics to ask for something that you know will be refused.

Anyone who pretends not to be interested in money is either a fool or a knave.

if you cannot get what you want, common sense suggests that you should put your mind to wanting what you can get.

Things you can't understand are always the hardest to bear. To know why is the first step to consolation.

there are virtues which are very well in the abstract, but which, encountered in the flesh, can be a source of extreme irritation.

Take things as they come. Take things as they are. What does it matter? There's one end to everything.

When you've just made the most complete fool of yourself, you feel the need of a specially high horse to ride.

Any road is bound to arrive somewhere if you follow it far enough

A lie that is half a truth is ever the hardest to fight.

One cannot withdraw from the life of the community. Injury to one member of it cannot fail to be the concern of all.

Nobody likes to be accused of a virtue.

You cannot be truly humble, unless you truly believe that life can and will go on without you.

Sometimes I think depression should be called the coping illness. So many of us struggle on, not daring or knowing how to ask for help. More of us, terribly, go undiagnosed.

These are people who haven't gone through the legal means to becoming citizens like our forefathers did. They want all the benefits but none of the responsibilities.

England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.

The military preferred - invariably - those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled.

I'll tell you what's more important than all the commentaries in your library: prayer.

The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown.

No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation - in Elias case (who was later John the Baptist) at least.

I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.