We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.

The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.

If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.

Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.