My Small Boat

When you see a good move, look for a better one.

The south-west wind roaring in from the Atlantic…. is, I think the presiding genius of England.

on being asked which was his favorite chess piece

It does not really matter, as long as it is an extra one.

No man ever became extremely wicked all at once.

Harpists spend 90% of their time tuning their harps and 10% playing out of tune.

This is a great metaphor – I just haven’t worked out what for!

New Year Poem

Tomorrow in the offices the year on the stamps will be altered;
Tomorrow new diaries consulted, new calendars stand;
With such small adjustments life will again move forward
Implicating us all; and the voice of the living be heard:
“It is to us that you should turn your straying attention;
Us who need you, and are affected by your fortune;
Us you should love and to whom you should give your word.”

31 December 1940

“Always winter and never Christmas; think of that.” said Tumnus. “How awful!” said Lucy.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realise that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly;
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A truth and noonday light to thee.

The fox knows many tricks; the hedgehog one good one.

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.

“?”

Single letter telegram sent by Wilde from Paris to his publisher in Britain inquiring how his new book was doing.

The publisher cabled an equally brief reply:

“!”

Clement Freud (grandson of Sigmund) was visiting China as part of a parliamentary delegation with Winston Churchill MP and he asked of the authorities…

“I am in your country with a colleague, than whom I am older, have been in parliament longer, have held higher positions in our respective political parties: we are both staying at the Peking Palace Hotel and his suite is bigger than mine. Why?”

The Minister, very embarrassed, finally said: “It is because Mr Churchill had a famous grandfather.”

Clement reflected that “It is the only time that I have been out-grandfathered.”

Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself.

Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.

(in slightly different words previously incorrectly attributed to C S Lewis)

You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.

There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature…

Travel is highly educational.

I can’t do with any more education. I was full up years ago.

Most political sermons teach the congregation nothing except what newspapers are taken at the Rectory

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

The point to remember is what the government gives it must first take away.