Youth is wasted on the young.
I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That’s right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete that monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of hell: All hope abandon ye who enter here.
He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.
It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.
Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.
If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist.
It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.
He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.
Ready are you? What know you of ready?
It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.
Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.
All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
The man who forgives is far stronger than the man who fights.
A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.
The future is purchased by the present.
I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.
Who prays for Satan? Who, in 1,800 years, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
