Lecturer Quotes

To one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest.

The solution to our water problems is more rain.

The poetry is all in the anticipation, for there is none in reality.

If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the pompous "wisdom" of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error.

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.

In literature imitations do not imitate.

The senses are a kind of reason. Taste, touch and smell, hearing and seeing, are not merely a means to sensation, enjoyable or otherwise, but they are also a means to knowledge - and are, indeed, your only actual means to knowledge.

I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning-knowing well that I shall find in it the usual depravities and basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair.

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction. When in doubt, tell the truth. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.

It is better to support schools than jails.

When congress is in session no American is safe.

He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.

Truth is stranger than fiction-to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.

When some men discharge an obligation, you can hear the report for miles around.

A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.

Regrets are illuminations come too late.

War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.

Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.

I hate to hear people say this Judge will vote so and so, because he is a Democrat -- and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is shameful. The Judges have the Constitution for their guidance; they have no right to any politics save the politics of rigid right and justice when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come before them.

It's easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.

I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves - and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

He had an uncommon fondness for cats. As an old man summering in New Hampshire, Twain even rented kittens from a nearby farm to keep him company until he returned home. "If man could be crossed with the cat," said Twain, "it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat." There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to good use.

Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.

It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility.

What a strange life I lead- a kind of Cinderella-life-half glitter in crystal shoes, half mice and cinders! But it is a wonderful life all the same.

I never fight, except against difficulties.

That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace.

The word 'comfort' comes from the Latin words for 'with' and 'strength' and originally meant operating from a position of power.

How lovely is death; and how niggardly it is doled out.

You aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

One learns peoples through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.

Every one of us is blind and deaf until our eyes are opened to our fellowmen, until our ears hear the voice of humanity.

Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth

Surely there is no road of effort so steep but a loving deed may soften its hardshness.

Look the world straight in the eye.

Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness.

High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.

Perfection isn't human. Human beings are not perfect. What evokes our love--and I mean love, not lust--is the imperfection of the human being. So, when the imperfection of the real person peaks through, say, 'This is a challenge to my compassion.' Then make a try, and something might begin to get going.

The perfect human being is uninteresting.

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

In German, a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has

I fell in love with the most cordial and sociable city in the Union.

Education is what remains when what is learned has been taken away.

[Do you worry unnecessarily about the future? Remember most fears are just False Evidence Appearing Real. Don't let unfounded fears rob you of the joys of life or you too will say...] There has been much tragedy in my life; [and] at least half of it actually happened.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

A healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any occupation.

I hope all of us may eventually be together in everlasting peace and bliss -- except the inventor of the #‎ telephone .

No man has an appreciation so various that his judgment is good upon all varieties of literary work.