Han-Shan

Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money’s sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal.That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

Let him that would move the world, first move himself.

Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to make them understood. It too often happens in some conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily Dress’d as those that are full of precious Drugs. They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.