Winston Churchill

Opening amenities are often opening inanities.

He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

As Puppets are to Men, and Babies to Children, so is Man’s Workmanship to God’s: We are the Picture, he the Reality.

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.

All that appears is devoid of independent existence, just like a magical apparition or a dream.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

I didn’t find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.