“A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to the job”

“It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer (banker), and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious values of gold.”

“I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.”

“Mr. Edison worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination. If a person asked him if he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say, "No, I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.".”

“A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.”

“The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.”

“You know you've got to exercise your brain just like your muscles.”

“As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.”

“Fruits that blossom first will first be ripe.”

“Adult males are what their moms designed them.”

“Every mind is different; and the more it is unfolded, the more pronounced is that difference.”

“My endeavorsHave ever come too short of my desires.Yet filed with my abilities.”

“To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.”

“...lest too light winning make the prize light.”

“To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”

“I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience.”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“Love sees with the heart and not with mind.”

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

“Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.”

“O teach me how I should forget to think (1.1.224)”

“The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly.”

“Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.”