Youth is wasted on the young.
The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.
Syllables govern the world.
An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.
You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it.
Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.
What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.
All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Sometimes the place you are used to is not the place you belong.
Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.
The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.
Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
Those who would mend the world must first mend themselves.
Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
