When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.

Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.

If we are deprived of hope as well as fear, we are compensated by being given an almost endless patience for enduring or simply for waiting.

When, in the present world, men behave well, that is no doubt sometimes because they are creatures of habit as well as, sometimes, because they are reasonable.

Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

In the long run our boasted control of nature is a delusion.

Nature takes no account of even the most reasonable of human excuses.