“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.”

To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.

There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join

People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism.

Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.

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.

If you depend on God’s grace there is no such thing as impossible.

Let us resolve: First, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault finding that does no good a sin; third, to practice the grade and virtue of praise.

So much more profitable and gracious is doctrine by example than by rule.

The constant desire of pleasing which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this that it rarely fails of attaining its end when not disgraced by affectation.

But O the exceeding grace Of highest God, that loves his creatures so, And all his works with mercy doth embrace, That blessed angels, he sends to and fro, To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe.

A sweet attractive kind of grace, A full assurance given by looks, Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of Gospel books– I trow that countenance cannot lye Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.

Hell strives with grace for conquest in my breast. What shall I do to shun the snares of death?

We should remember that science exists only because there are people, and its concepts exist only in the minds of men. Behind these concepts lies the reality which is being revealed to us, but only by the grace of God.