There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us ashamed of ourselves when it was happening: there is a pleasant panoramic sense of what it all was and how it all had to be. Why, if we are not vain or snobbish, need we desire that it should have been different? The better things we missed may yet be enjoyed or attained by someone else somewhere: why isn't that just as good? And there is no regret, either, in the sense of wishing the past to return, or missing it: it is quite real enough as it is, there at its own date and place

believes that truth for truth's sake is the highest ideal and that virtue is its own reward.

Joseph Lewis

Adam and Eve are like imaginary number, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.

Philip Pullman

Looking at the fire on the stone.

Daae ALF

That which is true must always remain true, though the applications may change greatly from generation to generation. It is the absence of such fundamental certainties, no doubt, that leads men into continual search for a satisfying religion, or that drives them away from their old religion.

John Andreas Widtsoe

The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.

Virginia Woolf

My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately

George Bernard Shaw

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage -- it can be delightful.

George Bernard Shaw

No gain is so certain as that which proceeds from the economical use of what you already have.

Proverb

I suppose I was a little bit of what would be called today a nerd. I didn't have girlfriends, and really I wasn't a very social boy.

Charles Kuralt

The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order.

Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey

Dawn, ever bearing some divine increase Of beauty, love, and wisdom round the world, Dawn, like a wild-rose in the fields of heaven Washed grey with dew, awoke, and found the barque At anchor in a little land-locked bay.

Alfred Noyes

I'm not involved in politics any more and they're quite right.

Jeffrey Archer