"Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate."

O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry; Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide; Take not Thy thunder from us, But take away our pride. From all that terror teaches, From lies of tongue and pen; From all the easy speeches That comfort cruel men; From sale and profanation Of honor and the sword; From sleep and from damnation, Deliver us, good Lord! Tie in a living tether The prince and priest and thrall; Bind all our lives together, Smite us and save us all; In ire and exultation Aflame with faith, and free, Lift up a living nation, A single sword to Thee.

We call some books immortal! Do they live? If so, believe me, Time hath made them pure. In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace.

Humour has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601 The scandal of the Bible does not lie so much in its claim to record the Word of God, as in its insistence that the Word of God is to be heard in a particular historical happening, in a particular locality -- and only there. To put it in a provocative manner: the Bible is theology. It is historical theology. It can reveal its meaning only to those who regard it as the Word of God, and are able to preserve a strict confidence in the universal significance of particular historical occasions.

Commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician, 1750 Let us go and wake up the universe... and sing His praises.

Stern fate and time Will have their victims; and the best die first, Leaving the bad still strong, though past their prime, To curse the hopeless world they ever curs'd Vaunting vile deeds, and vainest of the worst.

The fool that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well.

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.

The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.

'Twas he that ranged the words at random flung, Pierced the fair pearls and them together strung.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

I sing the Poppy! The frail snowy weed! The flower of Mercy! that within its heart Doth keep "a drop serene" for human need, A drowsy balm for every bitter smart. For happy hours the Rose will idly blow-- The Poppy hath a charm for pain and woe.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

The studio, a room to which the artist consigns himself for life, is naturally important, not only as workplace, but as a source of inspiration. And it usually manages, one way or another, to turn up in his product.

Quiet is what home would be without children.

She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.

not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!

It is not the fact that a person has riches that keeps them from heaven, but the fact that riches have them.