...yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.

Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

Meditation and water are wedded for ever.

I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.

War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.

Without the spirit of gratitude, no amount of blessings would activate the feeling of happiness in one's mind.

I tell it stories now and then and feed it images like honey. I will not speculate today with poems that think they're money.

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.

Spiritual practice . . . involves, on the one hand, acting out of concern for others' well-being. On the other, it entails transforming ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to do so.

Every theatre worth anything has somebody in the middle of it who is driving it; like Joan Littlewood with her theatre.

There is nothing in the world common to man, that man cannot do.

Try typing a web key on a touchscreen on an Apple iPhone, that's a real challenge. You cannot see what you type.

None of the things in life - like love or faith - was arrived at by thinking; indeed, one could almost define the things that mattered as the ones that came as suddenly as thunder.

Love Our Lady and make her loved; always recite the Rosary and recite it as often as possible.

A technician is a man who understands everything about his job except its ultimate purpose and its place in the order of the universe.