Robert Brault

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.

If you can’t forgive and forget, pick one.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

Duties are not performed for duty’s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness – an open and noble temper.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.