In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons. -Herodotus.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth--the true poet is very near the oracle.

If a man would live in peace he should be blind, deaf, and dumb.

Some of the smallest situations are the biggest to some people.

Feast of John Vianney, Curè d'Ars, 1859 Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.

Given a big enough why people can bear almost any how.

The spring's already at the gate With looks my care beguiling; The country round appeareth straight A flower-garden smiling.

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still; Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.

If you want to see what your friends and family think of you, die broke, and see who comes to your funeral.

Without speculation there is no good and original observation.

The wounded gladiator forswears all fighting, but soon forgetting his former wound resumes his arms.

Genius is intensity. The man who gets anything worth having is the man who goes after his object as a bulldog goes after a cat - with every fiber in him tense with eagerness and determination.

The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.

The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.

My father was an eminent button-maker at Birmingham, . . . but I had a soul above buttons.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.

The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever.

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.