We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
We are prisoners of ideas.
It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!
Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?
To choose time is to save time.
I shall strike the stars with my unlifted head.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.
Where charity keeps pace with grain, industry is blessed, but to slave to get, and keep it sordidly, is a sin against Providence, a vice in government and an injury to their neighbours.
The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.
Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.
Events tend to recur in cycles.
Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.
The way to do well is to do well.
Doing as others told me, I was blind. Coming when others called me, I was lost. Then I left everyone, myself as well. Then I found myself, myself as well.
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
