That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended - civilizations are built up - excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down.

But he always licked to get visitors alone in the billiard room and tell them stories about a mysterious lady, a foreign royalty, with whom he had driven about London. 'A devilish temper she had,' he would say. 'But she was a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman.

If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not.

Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

if anyone present wishes to make me the subject of his wit, I am very much at his service--with my sword--whenever he has leisure.

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

There is no use in talking as if forgiveness were easy. For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again.