Craig Ferguson (host of the Late, Late Show) is one of my favorite talk show hosts. To me he is a completely unique and wonderful blend of emotion, honesty, integrity, and class. He never hides his faults and admits his vulnerabilities openly, creating an incredible rapport with his audience. His loveliness lies not in his comedy, but in his relations with the rest of humanity:
Craig talks about his father
Craig talks about his mother
"I am standing upon that foreshore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" "Gone where?" "Gone from my sight, that's all." She is just as large in mast and spar and hull as ever she was when she left my side; just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at that moment when someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!" And that is dying."
Victor Hugo, from Toilers of the Sea
<3
A comedic great. A great man.

A lovely quote by Lord James Bryce about America's haste to develop during the Industrial Era:

“Gentlemen, why in heaven’s name this haste? You have time enough. [...] Ages and ages lie before you. Why sacrifice the present to the future, fancying that you will be happier when your fields teem with wealth and your cities with people? In Europe we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours, and we are not happy. You dream of your posterity; but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age, and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid nature, who first lifted up their axes upon these tall trees, and lined these waters with busy wharves. Why, then, seek to complete in a few decades what the other nations of the world took thousands of years over in the older continents? [...] Why, in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts? [...] Why hasten the advent of that threatening day when the vacant spaces of the continent shall all have been filled, and the poverty or discontent of the older States shall find no outlet? You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before, and may never have again. Your work is great and noble; it is done for a future longer and vaster than our conceptions can embrace. Why not make its outlines and beginnings worthy of these destinies, the thought of which gilds your hopes and elevates your purposes?”

It seems to me that following a time of haste, whether it be in the life of an individual or the progress of a nation, the time that was not spent relishing in the newness or present of a situation is greatly longed for again.