“One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.”

We live under a prince who is an enemy to fraud, a prince whose eyes penetrate into the heart, and whom all the art of impostors can’t deceive.

The world, dear Agnes, is a strange affair.

I maintain, in truth, That with a smile we should instruct our youth, Be very gentle when we have to blame, And not put them in fear of virtue’s name.

Men often marry in hasty recklessness and repent afterward all their lives.

It is good food and not fine words that keeps me alive.

When you model yourself on people, you should try to resemble their good sides.

Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths.

Malicious tongues spread their poison abroad and nothing here below is proof against them.

People spend most of their lives worrying about things that never happen.

There is no praise to bear the sort that you put in your pocket.

And knowing money is a root of evil, in Christian charity, he’d take away whatever things may hinder your salvation.

It’s true Heaven forbids some pleasures, but a compromise can usually be found.

The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.

Then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honor turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave’s a fine and private place But none, I think, do there embrace.

The true touchstone of wit is the impromptu.

The envious will die, but envy never.

What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place.

Decades of Saddam’s rule made what could have been a fairly rich country, due to its oil reserves, into a very poor one.

What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!

Our starting point is not the individual: We do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, or clothe the naked. Our objectives are different: We must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world.

Reading dreams. That’s what started her walking down the road. Every day she’d walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.

Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.

There are things money can’t buy and hard work can’t win. One of them is happiness.

The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it.