A civilized nation can have no enemies and one cannot draw a line across a map a line that doesn't even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side and good friends live on the other.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature and poetry and all that is spiritual.

A rude nature is worse than a brute nature by so much more as man is better than a beast: and those that are of civil natures and genteel dispositions are as much nearer to celestial creatures as those that are rude and cruel are to devils.

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the world.

Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune.

You think that religion is a thing that is there to help you and to see you through life and then you wake up one morning and find the entire Irish situation the civil war that's based on religion.

There are 435 members of Congress. There's one 'Morning Joe' show. Hopefully we can keep hammering the argument that you can disagree with other people and have debates but remain civil.

When I wake up on a Monday morning and I realise I don't have to go and work at the civil service I really think I've won.

On the last morning of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea.

What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one.