Quotes to inspire and reflect

I have waited 50 years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.

Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.

The whole map of Europe has been changed … but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again.

It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.

I do not know whether it was Chou dreaming that he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that it was Chou.

He [Hercule Poirot] tapped his forehead.

When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.

War settles nothing … to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one!

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

AM IN MARKET HARBOROUGH. WHERE OUGHT i TO BE?

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

Journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind.

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

Democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget.

A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

From all that terror teaches,

Fools! For I also had my hour;

For the great Gaels of Ireland

I tell you naught for your comfort,

MEDVEDENKO : Why do you wear black all the time?

O yonge, fresshe folkes, he or she,

For of fortunes sharpe adversitee

And ther he saugh, with ful avysement

That lyf so short,

And she was fayr as is the rose in May.

Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee

A likerous mouth moste han a likerous tayl.

Mordre wol out; that se we day by day.

Yblessed be god that I have wedded fyve! Welcome the sixte, whan that evere he shal.

This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf,

Love wol nat been constreyned by maistrye.