The United States grants the favors of the second, third, or fifty-seventh chance, and its citizens remain free to invent for themselves whatever character draws a crowd or pays the rent.
Dread not events unknown, and be not downhearted, for the fountain of the water of life is involved in obscurity.
Where would the gardener be if there were no more weeds?
The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints.
A covetous man’s penny is a stone.
The true problem of living is to keep our hearts sweet and gentle in the hardest conditions and experiences.
You have to climb to reach a deep thought.
The faith in reason insists that the poverty of democracy offers a greater hope for mankind than the prosperity that attaches itself to aristocracy or despotism.
Look in the face of the person to whom you are speaking if you wish to know his real sentiments, for he can command his words more easily than his countenance.
Never seem wiser or more learned than the people you are with.
Talk often, but never long: in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers.
Can the cannibal speak in the name of those he ate?
Letters should be easy and natural.
Dark windows are often a very clear proof.
The spider is the chamberlain in the Palace of the Caesars The owl is the trumpeter on the battlements of Afrasiyah.
Because democratic institutions do not renew themselves as effortlessly as flowering trees, they demand the ceaseless tinkering of people who possess both the courage and the honesty to admit their mistakes and accept responsibility for even the most inglorious acts.
The artist’s imagination may wander far from nature. But as long as it is a living, moving power in his brain, isn’t it just as real as any other natural phenomenon? The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.
It is a great deal easier to do that which God gives us to do, no matter how hard it is, than to face the responsibilities of not doing it.
If you’re involved in an accident and you’re at fault $500,000 may not be enough. Do you really want to lose your house because you failed to spend an extra couple of hundred bucks?
I’ve still got a lot to learn about Washington. Thursday, I accidentally spent some of my own money.