“I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me or differ from me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of the gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night.” — Sir George Sitwell

“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.” — John Ruskin

“Sleep is death enjoyed.” — Friedrich Hebbel

“The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin with age & its privileges and accumulations, & end with youth & its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, when in youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can’t have it. When you are old, you get it & there is nothing worth buying with it then. It’s an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.”

— Mark Twain, letter to Edward Dimmitt, July 19, 1901

“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because it pleases him, and it pleases him because it is beautiful. Were nature not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” — Henri Poincaré

“Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.” — Gertrude Stein

“When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.” — George Bernard Shaw