Blame is safer than praise.
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.
A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.
O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.
The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.
The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.
Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
I have lived with several Zen masters – all of them cats.
Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.
We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute.
The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.
Think with your whole body.
The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.