Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.

What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again?

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.

When last the young Orlando parted from you, He left a promise to return again Within a hour; and pacing through the forest, Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy, Lo, what befell!

The bigger they are, the further they have to fall.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

The sky is that beautiful old parchment in which the sun and the moon keep their diary.

The Greek word euphuia, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to perceive it; a harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites "the two noblest of things"--as Swift . . . most happily calls them in his Battle of the Books, "the two noblest of things, sweetness and light."

Feast of Hugh, Carthusian Monk, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200 [God desires] not that He may say to them, "Look how mighty I am, and go down upon your knees and worship", for power alone was never yet worthy of prayer; but that He may say thus: "Look, my children, you will never be strong but with my strength. I have no other to give you. And that you can get only by trusting in me. I can not give it you any other way. There is no other way.

But owned that smile, if oft observed and near, Waned in its mirth, and wither'd to a sneer.

No one is so generous as he who has nothing to give.

Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

Feast of John Vianney, Curè d'Ars, 1859 I am, indeed, far from agreeing with those who think all religious fear barbarous and degrading and demand that it should be banished from the spiritual life. Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things--ignorance, alcohol, passion presumption, and stupidity. It is very desirable that we should all advance to that perfection of love in which we shall fear no longer; but it is very undesirable, until we have reached that stage, that we should allow any inferior agent to cast out our fear.

Racing is a matter of spirit not strength.