Men who think in lifetimes are of little use to statesmanship.
In politics, strangely enough, the best way to play your cards is to lay them face upwards on the table.
An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.
Endless conflicts. Endless misunderstanding. All life is that. Great and little cannot understand one another.
We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.
[A novel by Henry James] is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently place, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string.