Life and Existence

Firmly I believe and truly

Praise to the Holiest in the height,

If I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

She [the Catholic Church] holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin.

Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.

Two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator.

Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.

Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.

This hath not offended the king.

Fare well my dear child and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends that we may merrily meet in heaven.

I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and my coming down let me shift for my self.

Is not this house as nigh heaven as my own?

Is not this house as nigh heaven as my own?

If the triangles were to make a God they would give him three sides.

Que sais-je?

Man is quite insane. He wouldn’t know how to create a maggot, and he creates gods by the dozen.

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn’t amusing herself with me more than I am with her?

The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them; he has lived for a long time who has little lived. Whether you have lived enough depends not on the number of your years but on your will.