“The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.”

The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.

It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.

The party which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity in the party which is in; and the party which is in sees nothing but greed and animosity in the party which is out.

Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.

Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.

We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.

We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle.

But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of collapsing when full blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to melt away in the sunshine of a smile.

We know when we have had enough of a friend, and we know when a friend has had enough of us. The first truth is no more palatable than the second.

Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.

it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.

Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.

Without an end to the burning of fossil fuels, coal especially, most of us will live shorter lives. I’m hopeful, but very, very concerned.

Where Snah [Hans Magnus Ryan] is a melody and texture man, I am more of a riff, rhythm and concept guy. I am much better than him in certain fields, and he surely wipes the floor with me in others, and we both know it’s like that.

One of the very first things I figured out about life…is that it’s better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you’re hopeful, you have more fun.

Thus, only in a hopeful and confident temper, in a proud and constructive spirit, will we rescue the present and safeguard the future of our beloved country.

I’m hopeful that the energy efficiency and public buildings bill will have their endorsement.

This high proportion of history’s decisive campaigns, the significance of which is enhanced by the comparative rarity of the direct approach, enforces the conclusion that the indirect is by far the most hopeful and economic form of strategy.

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

In turn, we will be tempted to kill our computers, but we won’t dare because we are already utterly, irreversibly dependent on these hopeful monsters that make modern life possible.