Charles Dickens

Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.

Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.

Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.

Shoot for the moon. If you miss you’ll still end up in the stars.

And of all the things I look forward to in life, falling in love with you is at the top of the list.

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

The think I remember most about Brooklyn was how much I wanted to get out of Brooklyn.

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we’re living with right now.

This is the only reason Greenfield Village exists-to give us a sense of unity with our people through the generations, and to convey the inspiration of American genius to our young men. As a nation we have not depended so much on rare or occasional genius as on the general resourcefulness of our people. That is our true genius, and I am hoping that Greenfield Village will serve that.

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.

Failure is no accident.

Join the dance.

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.