Being is the great explainer.
It takes two to speak truth – one to speak, and another to hear.
We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.
Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
When I feel like dancing, I dance. I don’t care if anyone else is dancing or if everyone else is laughing at me. I dance.
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.
Sorrow makes us children again.
To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.
Power doesn’t corrupt people; people corrupt power.
In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.
Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
The time has come to shed this skin. Its cloying inconvenience doesn’t fit me anymore. My new attire strikes color, shine, shadow, makes noise, and may put your teeth on edge. Tough sh–. Get used to it. I’m inviting you to step into your fear and dance with life.
One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.
