Life and Existence

to reporters the day after his accession to the Presidency on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.

Experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform.

Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity.

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.

It is not worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.

Our life is frittered away by detail …

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life … to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life … to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

A man you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.

It was my thirtieth year to heaven.

It was my thirtieth year to heaven.

I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,