• Speaker Lenthall

    May it please your majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this house is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this

  • Robertson Davies

    Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

  • Roald Dahl

    And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

  • Sir Harry Vaisey

    A gentleman’s agreement is an agreement which is not an agreement, made between two people neither of whom are gentlemen, whereby each expects the other to be strictly bound without himself being bound at all.

  • Andrew Motion

    Causa Belli

    They read good books, and quote, but never learn
    a language other than the scream of rocket-burn
    Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad;
    elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

  • H L Mencken

    his stock reply to angry letters:

    Dear Sir,

    You may be right.

    Sincerely yours,

    H L Mencken

  • James Thurber

    I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

  • Philip Larkin

    Days

    What are days for?
    Days are where we live.
    They come, they wake us
    Time and time over.
    They are to be happy in:
    Where can we live but days?

    Ah, solving that question
    Brings the priest and the doctor
    In their long coats
    Running over the fields.

  • Aristotle

    All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

  • William Thackeray

    To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forego even ambition when the end is gained – who can say this is not greatness?

  • Carl Sandburg

    Grass

    Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
    Shovel them under and let me work-
    I am the grass; I cover all.

    And pile them high at Gettysburg
    And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
    Shovel them under and let me work.
    Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
    What place is this?
    Where are we now?

    I am the grass.
    Let me work.

  • Bill Koch

    The secret to winning is very simple: do everything reasonably well and make no mistakes.

  • The (Over) Optimist

    They said that it could not be done:
    With a laugh he went right to it.
    He tackled the thing that couldn’t be done –
    And couldn’t do it.

  • Michael Crichton

    Although knowledge of how things work is sufficient to allow manipulation of nature, what humans really want to know is why things work. Children don’t ask how the sky is blue. They ask why the sky is blue.