“The gayety of life, like the beauty and the moral worth of life, is a saving grace, which to ignore is folly, and to destroy is crime. There is no more than we need; there is barely enough to go round.”

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.

Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.

Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.

Wit is a thing capable of proof.

It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.

Too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.

Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. … under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.

Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer’s reputation.

Art… does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.

It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.

I am eighty years old. There seems to be nothing to add to this statement. I have reached the age of undecorated facts – facts that refuse to be softened by sentiment, or confused by nobility of phrase.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.

For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.

Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don’t have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.

The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception. It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed, and pride still rages within us.

In a state of grace, the soul is like a well of limpid water, from which flow only streams of clearest crystal. Its works are pleasing both to God and man, rising from the River of Life, beside which it is rooted like a tree.

When we, by the working of mercy and grace, be made meek and mild, we are fully safe; suddenly is the soul oned to God when it is truly peaced in itself: for in Him is found no wrath.

Grace is when you should be totally punished but are blessed for no reason.

All our difficulties are only platforms for the manifestations of His grace, power and love.

Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.

Luxury, to me, is not owning a lot of stuff. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed.