The causes of events are ever more interresting than the events themselves.

Light is the symbol of truth.

Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.

Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies.

To-morrow, didst thou say? Methought I heard Horatio say, To-morrow! Go to--I will not hear it. To-morrow! 'Tis a sharper--who stakes his penury Against thy plenty--takes thy ready cash, And pays thee naught but wishes, hopes, and promises, The currency of idiots--injurious bankrupt, That gulls the easy creditor!

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Act as if it were impossible to fail.

All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

Look a man in the eye and say what you really think, don't just smile at him and say what you're supposed to think.

Feast of Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304 Love is careful of little things, of circumstances and measures, and of little accidents; not allowing to itself any infirmity which it strives not to master, aiming at what it cannot yet reach, desiring to be of an angelic purity, and of a perfect innocence, and a seraphical fervor, and fears every image of offense; is as much afflicted at an idle word as some at an act of adultery, and will not allow to itself so much anger as will disturb a child, nor endure the impurity of a dream. And this is the curiosity and niceness of divine love: this is the fear of God, and is the daughter and production of love.

If all the misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525 We can all call to mind movements which have begun as pure upsurges of fresh spiritual vitality, breaking through and revolting against the hardened structure of the older body, and claiming, in the name of the Spirit, liberty from outward forms and institutions. And we have seen how rapidly they develop their own forms, their own structures of thought, of language, and of organisation. It would surely be a very unbiblical view of human nature and history to think -- as we so often, in our pagan way, do -- that this is just an example of the tendency of all things to slide down from a golden age to an age of iron, to identify the spiritual with the disembodied, and to regard visible structure as equivalent to sin. We must rather recognise here a testimony to the fact that Christianity is, in its very heart and essence, not a disembodied spirituality, but life in a visible fellowship, a life which makes such total claim upon us, and so engages our total powers, that nothing less than the closest and most binding association of men with one another can serve its purpose.

Surely, sir, There's in him stuff that puts him to these ends; For, being not propped by ancestry, whose grace Chalks successors their way, nor called upon For high feats done to th' crown, neither allied To eminent assistants, but spiderlike Out of his self-drawing web, 'a gives us note, The force of his own merit makes his way, A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys A place next to the king.

Obstinacy is ever most positive when it is most in the wrong.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

Love is my religion - I could die for it.

Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

Help thi kynne, Crist bit , for ther bygynneth charitie.

The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar An old woman found an empty jar which had lately been full of prime old wine and which still retained the fragrant smell of its former contents. She greedily placed it several times to her nose, and drawing it backwards and forwards said, O most delicious! How nice must the Wine itself have been, when it leaves behind in the very vessel which contained it so sweet a perfume! The memory of a good deed lives.