Quotes to inspire and reflect

No! No! No!

I am naturally very sorry to see you go, but understand … your wish to be able to spend more time with your family.

There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

We have become a grandmother.

We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

We can do business together.

Now it must be business as usual.

I was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values. I said straight out I was. And I am.

Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our armed forces and the Marines. Rejoice!

It is exciting to have a real crisis on your hands, when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment.

To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only this to say. ‘You turn if you want; the lady’s not for turning.’

No one would remember the Good

I stand before you tonight in my red chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up, my fair hair gently waved … the Iron Lady of the Western World! Me? A cold war warrior? Well, yes—if that is how they wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our way of life.

In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.

The important thing is not to think much but to love much.

No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary—not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be Prime Minister. You have to give yourself 100%.

Let nothing trouble you, nothing frighten you. All things are passing; God never changes. Patient endurance attains all things. Whoever possesses God lacks nothing: God alone suffices.

Our goodness derives not from our capacity to think but to love.

Ils n’ont rien appris, ni rien oublié.

That, Sire, is a question of dates.

Surtout, Messieurs, point de zèle.

This is the beginning of the end.

A stick and a string, with a fly at one end and a fool at the other.

Ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit.

Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book.

I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.

So geographers, in Afric-maps,

So, naturalists observe, a flea

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

Then, rising with Aurora’s light,

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.

Few are qualified to shine in company; but it is in most men’s power to be agreeable.

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly, that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants, by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.

He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.

She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same.

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

He replied that I must needs be mistaken, or that I said the thing which was not . (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.

I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he shewed as a pattern to encourage purchasers.

It is the folly of too many, to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.