Quote collection
442 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"But even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognized by the police, there must be degrees in the freedom and sympathy realized, and some principle to guide simple folk in their selection."
"Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
"I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both."
"Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies."
"In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see The birds still hopping on the tree, Or hear the grown-up people's feet Still going past me in the street. And does it not seem hard to you, When all the sky is clear and blue, And I should like so much to play, To have to go to bed by day?"
"There is a certain frame of mind to which a cemetery is, if not an antidote, at least an alleviation. If you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere else."
"The world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die."
"I consider the success of my day based on the seeds I sow, not the harvest I reap."
"Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind."
"Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate."
"To be truly happy is a question of how we begin, and not how we end, of what we want and not what we have."
"The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain common work as it comes certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things of life."
"Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a man who does not smoke."
"We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it."
"The spirit of delight comes in small ways."
"Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was."
"All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer."
"It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has become the very foremost badge of modern civilization--the Urim and Thummim of respectability. . . . So strongly do we feel on this point, indeed, that we are almost inclined to consider all who possess really well-conditioned umbrellas as worthy of the Franchise."
"The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek."
"When I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind."