Winston Churchill

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.

Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result.

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.

It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.

It is only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage; that we move on to better things.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Learn to say “I don’t know.” If used when appropriate, it will be often.

Duties are not performed for duty’s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.

To choose time is to save time.