#Practicality Quotes

“What need the bridge much broader than the flood?”

“Away, you trifler! Love! I love thee not,I care not for thee, Kate: this is no worldTo play with mammets and to tilt with lips:We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns.”

“Waste not thy time in windy argument but let the matter drop.”

“I cannot do it without comp[u]ters.”

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

“Always maintain your common sense and artful skills, and funnel it all into plain enough dealings.”

“Miracles are ceased; and therefore we must needs admit the means, how things are perfected.”

“The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.”

“The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.”

“Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.”

“I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults overthe moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.”

“Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”

“It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.”

“There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.”

“Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.”

“A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.”

“Science should be on tap, not on top.”

“The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is arealist, and converses with things.”

“When setting out on a journey do not seek advice from someone who never left home”

“It is nobler to love the person next to you than to love mankind in general.”

“... I think it would be so much better for me to learn something which would be useful to me in the army, as well as affording me exercise and amusement.”

“I'd rather spend half an hour in the company of a top carpenter, than three hours in the company of an average brain surgeon”

“Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve.”

“Thought makes everything fit for use.”

“No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.”

“Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty water, if clean cannot be had.”

“The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For...things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex.”

“What difference does the uniform make? You don't hit with it.”

“It is easier to give directions than advice, and more agreeable to have the right to act, even in a limited sphere, than the privilege to talk at large.”

“I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost.”

“The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.”

“Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.”

“Buy stocks like you buy your groceries, not like you buy your perfume.”

“You should never try and teach a pig to read for two reasons. First, it's impossible; and secondly, it annoys the hell out of the pig!.”

“People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible”

“Just because it's common sense, doesn't mean it's common practice.”

“Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do.”

“You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.”

“If book knowledge made great investors, than the librarians would all be rich.”

“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”

“Some guy invented Vitamin A out of a carrot. I'll bet he can't invent a good meal out of one.”

“If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.”

“Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life”

“In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.”

“The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them is a match.”

“Everything worthwhile is a good idea, but did you ever notice there is more bad ideas that will work than there is good ones?”

“One of these days they are going to remove so much of the 'hooey' and the thousands of things the schools have become clogged up with, and we will find that we can educate our broods for about one-tenth of the price and learn 'em something that they might accidentally use after they escape.”

“The most amazing and effective inventions are not those which do most honour to the human genius.”

“I don't have my diploma from the University of Nebraska hanging on my office wall, and I don't have my diploma from Columbia up there either-but I do have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate proudly displayed.”

“A good action is preferable to an argument.”