"The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."

"I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment."

"Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!"

"It was my shame, and now it is my boast, That I have loved you rather more than most."

"The world is full of double beds And most delightful maidenheads, Which being so, there’s no excuse For sodomy or self-abuse."

"[M]others of large families (who claim to common sense) Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense."

"I shoot the Hippopotamus With bullets made of platinum, Because if I use leaden ones His hide is sure to flatten 'em."

"When people call this beast to mind, They marvel more and more At such a LITTLE tail behind, So LARGE a trunk before."

"The Big Baboon is found upon The plains of Cariboo: He goes about with nothing on (A shocking thing to do). But if he dressed respectably And let his whiskers grow, How like this Big Baboon would be To Mister So-and-so!"

"What! Would you slap the Porcupine? Unhappy child — desist! Alas! That any friend of mine Should turn Tupto-philist."

"The Llama is a wooly sort of fleecy hairy goat, With an indolent expression and an undulating throat Like an unsuccessful literary man."

"The Microbe is so very small You cannot make him out at all, But many sanguine people hope To see him through a microscope."

"Oh! let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about!"

"'… and as to what may be in this book, do not feel timid nor hesitate to enter. There are more mountains than molehills …'"

"Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!"

"Man may […] be master of his fate, but he has a precious poor servant. It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour."

"Death […] people nowadays seem to regard as something odd, whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world."

"I sincerely hope, trust, and pray that this part of my journey will not seem as dull to you as it did to me at the time, or as it does to me now while I write of it. But now I come to think of it, it cannot seem as dull, for I had to walk that wretched thirty miles or so all the day long, whereas you have not even to read it; for I am not going to say anything more about it, but lead you straight to the end. Oh, blessed quality of books, that makes them a refuge from living! For in a book everything can be made to fit in, all tedium can be skipped over, and the intense moments can be made timeless and eternal."

"I found myself entering that pleasant mood in which all books are conceived (but none written); I was "smoking the enchanted cigarettes" of Balzac, and if this kind of reverie is fatal to action, yet it is so much a factor of happiness that I wasted in the contemplation of that lovely and silent hollow many miles of marching. I suppose if a man were altogether his own master and controlled by no necessity, not even the necessity of expression, all his life would pass away in these sublime imaginings."

"He's as great a master of ill language as ever was bred at a Bear-Garden."

"What is Logicke but the highe waie to wrangling, contayning in it a world of bibble babble. Neede we anie of your Greeke, Latine, Hebrue, or anie such gibbrige, when wee have the word of God in English?"

"Evermore mayst thou be canonized as the Nonparreille of impious epistlers."

"The Sun shineth as well on the good as the bad: God from on high beholdeth all the workers of iniquity, as well as the upright of heart."

"O, 'tis a precious apophthegmatical pedant who will find matter enough to dilate a whole day of the first invention of “Fy, fa, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.”"

"Dreaming is no other than groaning, while sleep our surgeon hath us in cure."

"A dream is nothing else but the echo of our conceits in the day."

"A dream is nothing else but a bubbling scum or froth of the fancy, which the day hath left undigested; or an after-feast made of the fragments of idle imaginations."

"Fair Summer droops, droop men and beasts therefore: So fair a summer look for never more. All good things vanish, less than in a day, Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay. Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year; The earth is hell when thou leav'st to appear."

"Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant King, Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing, Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu wee, to witta woo!"

"Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day."

"The fields breath sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit."

"Blest is that government where no art thrives."

"Adieu, farewell earth’s bliss, This world uncertain is, Fond are life’s lustful joys, Death proves them all but toys, None from his darts can fly; I am sick, I must die: Lord, have mercy on us."

"Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour."

"Brightness falls from the air, Queens have died young and fair, Dust hath closed Helen's eye. I am sick, I must die: Lord, have mercy on us."

"Strength stoops unto the grave, Worms feed on Hector brave, Swords may not fight with fate, Earth still holds ope her gate. Come, come, the bells do cry. I am sick, I must die."

"From winter, plague, and pestilence, good Lord, deliver us."

"When he had left the room, I mused over the conversation which had just taken place between us, but I could make nothing out of it, except that it argued an even greater perversity of mental vision than I had been yet prepared for. And this made me wretched; for I cannot bear having much to do with people who think differently from myself."

"I felt comparatively happy, but I can assure the reader that I had had a far worse time of it than I have told him; and I strongly recommend him to remain in Europe if he can; or, at any rate, in some country which has been explored and settled, rather than go into places where others have not been before him. Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name."

"I call it to mind and delight in it now, but I did not notice it at the time. We next to never know when we are well off: but this cuts two ways,--for if we did, we should perhaps know better when we are ill off also; and I have sometimes thought that there are as many ignorant of the one as of the other. He who wrote, “O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint agricolas,” might have written quite as truly, “O infortunatos nimium sua si mala norint”; and there are few of us who are not protected from the keenest pain by our inability to see what it is that we have done, what we are suffering, and what we truly are. Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only."

"When I am dead I would rather people thought me better than I was instead of worse; but if they think me worse, I cannot help it and, if it matters at all, it will matter more to them than to me."

"The world will, in the end, follow only those who have despised as well as served it."

"To try to live in posterity is to be like an actor who leaps over the footlights and talks to the orchestra."

"To himself every one is an immortal: he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead."

"There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death."

"To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead."

"No one thinks he will escape death, so there is no disappointment and, as long as we know neither the when nor the how, the mere fact that we shall one day have to go does not much affect us; we do not care, even though we know vaguely that we have not long to live. The serious trouble begins when death becomes definite in time and shape. It is in precise fore-knowledge, rather than in sin, that the sting of death is to be found; and such fore-knowledge is generally withheld; though, strangely enough, many would have it if they could."

"I am not sure that I do not begin to like the correction of a mistake, even when it involves my having shown much ignorance and stupidity, as well as I like hitting on a new idea."

"You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it."

"We are not won by arguments that we can analyse, but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself."