Winston Churchill

The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

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

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

Well, dearie, men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. But you can’t blame them for that, can you?

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients, no, three, I think – yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

The truest end of life is to know that life never ends.

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

It’s the ones that stayed after the Exodus, that I knew were real and could handle the truth; that would stay with me on my journey, for better or worse.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.