If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?
A word once uttered can never be recalled.
Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.
This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.
There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.
When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream.
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
The course of everything goes to teach us faith.
Justice though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight.
It is better to walk alone, then with a crowd going in the wrong direction.
Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.
Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.
Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life…all of our life.
We have a problem. Congratulations. But it’s a tough problem. Then double congratulations.
Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s wall is ablaze.
