There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.

Do not, I beseech you be troubled by the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistake the hour of the night: it is already morning.

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.

But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic.

Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel.

There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting.

It's not the world that's got so much worse but the news coverage that's got so much better.