“Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”

I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything.

Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you.

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant.

The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.

Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses.

A thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her.

A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

A sudden happiness catches me unawares. I feel it trickling into me, and my eyes go liquid with gratitude and hope.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Regardless of how it goes down, life goes on.

The one thing I wished for my children is that they’d be readers.

I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.

War is just to those for whom it is necessary, and arms are clear of impiety for those who have no hope left but in arms.

Memories can’t be remembered if they were never made. So I hope you make good ones.