Winston Churchill

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

Say what you have to say and first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending; sit down.

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

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails – aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

That was Youth with its reckless exuberance when all things were possible pursued by Age where we are now, looking back at what we destroyed, what we tore away from that self who could do more, and its work that’s become my enemy because that’s what I can tell you about, that Youth who could do anything.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care.

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

Gazing to the south, from the eastern peak, the moon appears through the raindrops.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.