Every wall is a door.
By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.
There is a crack in everything God has made.
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.
I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.
We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.
What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.
A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
The virtue in most request is conformity.
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
Danger – if you meet it promptly and without flinching – you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.
In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.
If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.
We have a problem. Congratulations. But it’s a tough problem. Then double congratulations.
The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.