Even in a gleefully negative comic there is optimism although it's slightly hidden: It comes out through a comic character's sheer tenacity. He keeps going and trying to find some sort of fulfillment regardless of his perpetual failure record. That's a form of hope a form of optimism. Really hokey I know but it's true.

For families across the UK who are income-poor but more than that whose lives are blighted by worklessness educational failure family breakdown problem debt and poor health as well as other problems giving them an extra pound - say through increased benefits - will not address the reason they find themselves in difficulty in the first place.

Far better is it to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic partly due to the irregularity of the air and partly to lack of experience in handling this machine. The control of the front rudder was difficult on account of its being balanced too near the center.

Succeeding is not really a life experience that does that much good. Failing is a much more sobering and enlightening experience.

When they call the slightest spending reductions 'painful' we will say 'If government spending prevents pain why are we suffering so much of it?' And 'If you want to experience real pain just stay on the track we are on.'

When a novel has 200 000 words then it is possible for the reader to experience 200 000 delights and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again perhaps more intensely.

Men do weird things when they experience fear. It's like a fight-or-flight thing.

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom to enlightenment.

To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship which illuminate only the track it has passed.