And we were angry and poor and happy, And proud of seeing our names in print.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

Even in a minute instance, it is best to look first to the main tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may not be dead in early winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble may never be wetted with the tide, but the tide is coming in. To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements, destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds in spring.

It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle.

As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.

The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.