Many who burnt heretics in the ordinary way of their business were otherwise excellent people.

"History repeats itself" and "History never repeats itself" are about equally true ... We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.

I have two doctors, my left leg and my right.

I never knew a man go for an honest day's walk for whatever distance, great or small, and not have his reward in the repossession of his soul.

What is easy to read has been difficult to write. The labour of writing and rewriting, correcting and recorrecting, is the due exacted by every good book from its author, even if he knows from the beginning exactly what he wants to say. A limpid style is invariably the result of hard labour, and the easily flowing connection of sentence with sentence and paragraph with paragraph has always been won by the sweat of the brow.

Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.

I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. When body and mind are out of gear (and those twin parts of me live at such close quarters that the one always catches melancholy from the other) I know that I shall have only to call in my doctors and I shall be well again.