“A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.”
“Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all.”
“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”
“Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.”
“People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.”
“A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.”
“The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul.”
“Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.”
“A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.”
“Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.”
“Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.”
“It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.”
“Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.”
“We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them...”
“Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.”
“Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.”
“For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.”
“Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers.”
“But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”
“And if I should live to beThe last leaf upon the treeIn the spring,Let them smile, as I do now,At the old forsaken boughWhere I cling.”
“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”
“I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me”
“The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.”
“What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!”
“Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.”
