Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.
It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.
Merry Christmas! the man threatened.
Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.
Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.
That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.
You’ve got to have a good spirit on the inside. That’s what’s really going to make you look like you’re ready to rock the world.
People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.
The greatest glory in living lies in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Fear always springs from ignorance.
Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?
Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.
We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
To think is to practice brain chemistry.
Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.
Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
