“Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine.”

There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings.

Whoever benefits his enemy with straightforward intention that man’s enemies will soon fold their hands in devotion.

Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.

Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.

Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.

Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.

They who go Feel not the pain of parting; it is they Who stay behind that suffer.

A thought often makes us hotter than a fire.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.

Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.

Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.

The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

People won’t want powers being handed back from bureaucrats in Brussels to be given to bureaucrats in Britain.

He knew them only ‘in Braille’ – the curtains were never drawn back in the rooms in Oxford where he met those boys. It was the most sordid life you can imagine. And he was bleating about love and dragging the fair name of Mr. Plato into the trial – after a life like that?

Back of ninety-nine out of one-hundred assertions that a thing cannot be done is nothing, but the unwillingness to do it.

I was amazed to receive later a substantial sum for sitting in my room and talking about myself. If only I could get some of the back pay!

I always want to wear clothes that my children will one day look back on and say, ‘Oh, you looked amazing – why didn’t you keep that?’ Not, ‘Oh my God – I can’t believe you wore that.’

The sunlit face of the earth would appear to shine by the light diffused back into space from the land and water-covered areas.

I want you to promise the Lord that, from tonight, you will not think back, look back, or act back!

You can’t reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.