Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past, And neither fear nor wish th' approaches of the last.

I wear my Pen as others do their Sword. To each affronting sot I meet, the word Is Satisfaction: straight to thrusts I go, And pointed satire runs him through and through.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, they need pruning by study.

This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons pease, And utters it again when God doth please.

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.

The curiosity to know things has been given to man as a scourge.

A humanist is anyone who rejects the attempt to describe or account for man wholly on the basis of physics, chemistry or animal behaviour.

Thank heaven. A bachelor's life is no life for a single man.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite.

Resolved: never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.

This is courage in a man: to bear unflinchingly what heaven sends.

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.

The Greek word euphuia, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to perceive it; a harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites "the two noblest of things"--as Swift . . . most happily calls them in his Battle of the Books, "the two noblest of things, sweetness and light."

In those days he was wiser than he is now he used frequently to take my advice.

Physical infidelity is the signal, the notice given, that all fidelities are undermined.

I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex.

Lawyers are men who hire out their words and anger.

Feast of Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304 At no point does the Gospel encourage us to believe that every man will hearken to it, charm we never so wisely. The prophets, for all their passionate sincerity, for all their courageous simplifyings of the Gospel, will meet many deaf adders who stop their ears. We must reckon with this certain fact, and refuse to be daunted by it. But also there comes a point where accommodation can go no further. It is the Gospel we have to present, however we do it. We cannot hope to do it unless we walk humbly with the modern man, as well as with God, unless we are much more eager to learn from him and about him, than to instruct him. God help us, it is all very difficult. But was there ever a task better worth trying to do, or one in which, whether we fail or succeed, we more surely find our freedom?

We spent our whole youth to obtain wealth and our whole wealth to obtain youth.