We are wiser than we know.
The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.
There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.
Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.
The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent – for every effect a perfect cause – and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.
Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.
Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts – a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.
Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.
Excessive literary production is a social offense.
A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.
The first wealth is health.
The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume; but a good stomach excels them all.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.
No comment is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.
Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.
A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.
