To understand one's self is the classic form of consolation; to delude one's self is the romantic.

If I smile at the strong perfumes of the silly Rufillus must I be regarded as envious and ill-natured?

Don't do as I do, do as I say.

If you count all your assets you always show a profit.

He who has lived obscurely and quietly has lived well.

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails and impious men bear away, The post of honor is a private station.

There is the story of a pastor who got up one Sunday and announced to his congregation: "I have good news and bad news. The good news is, we have enough money to pay for our new building program. The bad news is, it's still out there in your pockets.".

Ay, now am I in Arden: the more fool I. When I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content. -As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 4.

True it is that covetousness is rich, modesty starves.

Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.

Peace hath her victories No less renown'd than war.

Our knowledge and our ability to handle our problems progress through the open conflict of ideas, through the tests of phenomenological adequacy, inner consistency, and practical-moral consequences. Reason may err, but it can be moral. If we must err, let it be on the side of our creativity, our freedom, our betterment.

Estate agents. You can't live with them, you can't live with them. The first sign of these nasty purulent sores appeared round about 1894. With their jangling keys, nasty suits, revolting beards, moustaches and tinted spectacles, estate agents roam the land causing perturbation and despair. If you try and kill them, you're put in prison: if you try and talk to them, you vomit. There's only one thing worse than an estate agent but at least that can be safely lanced, drained and surgically dressed. Estate agents. Love them or loathe them, you'd be mad not to loathe them.

Feast of Hildegard, Abbess of Bingen, Visionary, 1179 That earth and that heaven, which spent God himself, Almighty God, six days in finishing, Moses sets up in a few syllables, in one line: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. If a Livie or a Guicciardine, or such extensive and voluminous authors had had this story in hand, God must have made another world, to have made them a library to hold their books, of the making of this world. Into what wire would they have drawn out this earth! Into what leaf-gold would they have beat out these heavens! It may assist our conjecture herein, to consider, that amongst those men, who proceed with a sober modesty and limitation in their writing, & make a conscience not to clog the world with unnecessary books, yet the volumes which are written by them, upon the beginning of Genesis, are scarce less than infinite. God did no more but say, Let this & this be done; and Moses doth no more but say, that upon God's saying it was done. God required not Nature to help him to do it; Moses required not Reason to help him believe.

If you judge, investigate; if you reign, command.

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

Each Bond-street buck conceits, unhappy elf; He shows his clothes! alas! he shows himself. O that they knew, these overdrest self-lovers, What hides the body oft the mind discovers.

It's like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt.

Commemoration of Birinus, Bishop of Dorchester (Oxon), Apostle of Wessex, 650 Prayer is the preface to the book of Christian living; the test of the new life sermon; the girding on of armor for battle; the pilgrim's preparation for his journey. It must be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing.