"You may rejoice to think yourselves secure, You may be grateful for the gift divine, That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine. But is it sweet to look around and view Thousands excluded from that happiness, Which they deserve at least as much as you, Their faults not greater nor their virtues less?"

"This is the creative spirit who, by means of instructive stories, commands us to feel the charm of virtue; who, by means of Grandison, extorts from the sinner himself a first wish to be pious also. The works which he created, no time can destroy; they are nature, taste, religion. Immortal is Homer, but among Christians the British Richardson is more immortal still."

"Love gratified, is love satisfied — and love satisfied, is indifference begun."

"I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do."

"Nothing can be more wounding to a spirit not ungenerous, than a generous forgiveness."

"The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through."

"The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor."

"Vast is the field of Science … the more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know."

"O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! — I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!"

"My Master said, on another Occasion, that those who doubt most, always erred least."

"That dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband."

"The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level."

"Say does your heart expand to all mankind And would you ever to your neighbour do, — The weak, the strong, the enlightened and the blind — As you would have your neighbour do to you?And, when you, looking on your fellow men Behold them doomed to endless misery, How can you talk of joy and rapture then? May God withhold such cruel joy from me!"

"Women are so much in love with compliments that rather than want them, they will compliment one another, yet mean no more by it than the men do."

"If you had no higher motive than the approval of your fellow mortal, it would do you little good."

"That none deserve eternal bliss I know: Unmerited the grace in mercy given, But none shall sink to everlasting woe That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven."

"I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one half his days and mad the other; besides, I like to enjoy my life at all sides and ends, which cannot be done by one that suffers himself to be the slave of a single propensity."

"[Wight] failed many of his classes on the first try: surgery, pathology, physiology, histology, even animal husbandry (which he failed twice)"

"He straightened up. This was a tough one. He folded his arms across his chest as he stared into space and took the long inhalation I remembered so well, I could see that he was a big man again, his shoulders spreading wide, his face ruddy and well-fleshed."

"I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me."

"For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents. The words 'My book,' as in 'I'll put that in it one day,' became a sort of running joke. Eventually she said, 'Look, I don't want to offend you, but you've been saying that for 25 years. If you were going to write a book, you'd have done it. You're never going to do it now. Old vets of 50 don't write books.' So I purchased a lot of paper right then and started to write."

"Years ago, farmers were uneducated and eccentric and said funny things, and we ourselves were comparatively uneducated. We had no antibiotics, few drugs. A lot of time was spent pouring things down cows' throats. The whole thing added up to a lot of laughs. There's more science now, but not so many laughs."

"If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw."

"There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring. The great moment was one day when I was stitching up a cow's teats--they often get cut, you know--and my glasses were sliding down my nose. Suddenly I thought, Wight, you're too old for this. But it was a gradual transition. I just did less and less. It must be terrible to have a job you very much love chopped off."

"Cats are connoisseurs of comfort."

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

"Parsons always seem to be specially horrified about things like sunbathing and naked bodies. They don't mind poverty and misery and cruelty to animals nearly as much."

"Boredom comes simply from ignorance and lack of imagination."

"Educ[ated]: during the holidays from Eton."

"How simple-minded of the Germans to imagine that we British could be cowed by the destruction of our ancient monuments! As though any havoc of the German bombs could possibly equal the things we have done ourselves!"

"Everywhere men have unlocked the prisoners within, and from under the disguising skins the apes have leapt joyfully out."

"They loved him, I think, because, with all his merits, he showed them to be rich: looking at his portraits, they understood at last how rich they really were."

"The only difference between an artist and a lunatic is, perhaps, that the artist has the restraint or courtesy…to conceal the intensity of his obsession from all except those similarly afflicted."

"For Poetry is the wisdom of the blood, That scarlet tree within, which has the power To make dull words bud forth and burst in flower."

"The British bourgeoisie Is not born And does not die, But, if it is ill, It has a frightened look in its eyes."

"The Rich Man's Banquet, which was to last for a decade, had now begun: the feast, it was recognised, went to the greediest."

"The Daily Herald is unkind. It has been horrid About my nice new war. I shall burn the Daily Herald."

"Hell has a climate, but no situation. It lies in the spirit, and not in space."

"The artist, like the idiot or clown, sits on the edge of the world, and a push may send him over it."

"Heroic figures are now obsolete, So Demigod and Devil find retreat In minds of children — as rare beasts and men, Elsewhere extinct, persist in hill or fen From man protected — where each form assumes Gigantic stature and intention, looms From wind-moved, twilight-woven histories: For them each flower teems with mysteries."

"Our General Had to restore "Law-and-Order" At Amritsar; For he knew That if he failed To shoot Two thousand natives They would have laughed at him. To laugh at a General, Is, of course, very rude."

"I do not compare the past with the present without a prejudice for either, but, great as the improvement in country life is in many respects, it seems a pity the old cheap, wholesome dishes have gone to make way for tinned and preserved foods."

"Now, with the glamour of the past upon them we are inclined to look back on old world festivities with regret and consider present day dances as a poor substitute for the old. From an artistic point of view, they maybe, but in individual freedom and independence of spirit they mark a stage upward."

"We cannot bring the good old days back but, if we must eat mass-made foods, get laws passed to insist upon its goodness and purity."

"Other days, other ways! For myself I would desire a combination of old romance and modern machinery. No housewife would wish to the return to the era when everything, had to be made at home by candlelight and which lost to us who knows how many women poets and painters!"

"Manner and morals have improved, improved wages and world travel during the war have had effect, and the farm labourer now is an intelligent, self respecting workman, on a level at least with the town artisan. The village rustic of the past no longer exists outside of the comic papers."

"The harvest-home or supper is a thing of the past. To those who feel the fascination of the past this may appear sad, but it is not so really for, even while it existed, this surface goodwill was often an empty show."

"Some great poet or philosopher once said that " he who goes to nature for comfort must go to her empty handed " , and I think he was right."

"No age can have everything and in material ways ours is more fortunate than any preceding one. Our ancestors appear to have mastered the art of living better than we are able to when an easy conscience, largely due to the unshaken faith of the time, left a marging of spiritual energy with which to enjoy life."

"A grasshopper shrilled in a tuft at her feet and was answered by other shrillings among the gorse bushes; a solitary rook flapped heavily overhead, and a pair of goldfinches twittered among the thistle-down; there was no other sound except the scarcely perceptible never-ceasing sighing of the wind in the pines and its rustling of acres of heath-bells."