A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
Appearances matter – and remember to smile.
Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.
The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it… Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.
A home without a cat-and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat-may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
Accept your genius and say what you think.
Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.
Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.
Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness – an open and noble temper.
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
