Mystic: a person who is puzzled before the obvious, but who understands the non-existent.
Logic: an instrument used for bolstering a prejudice.
Laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced.
In a state of nature, the weakest go to the wall; in a state of over-refinement, both the weak and the strong go to the gutter.
Knowledge is the distilled essence of our institutions, corroborated by experience.
An American religion: Work, play, breathe, bathe, study, live, laugh, and love.
We never ask God to forgive anybody except when we haven’t.
Righteous indignation: your own wrath as opposed to the shocking bad temper of others.
Habit: The great economizer of energy.
Man, like Deity, creates in his own image.
I believe in courtesy, in kindness, in generosity, in good cheer, in friendship and in honest competition. I believe there is something doing somewhere, for every man ready to do it. I believe I’m ready, RIGHT NOW.
Most people like hard work, particularly when they’re paying for it.
It is always the nearest, plainest and simplest principles that learned men comprehend last.
Men who sit back and pride themselves on their culture haven’t any to speak of.
Do not dump your woes upon people – keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them.
History: gossip well told.
Men who marry for gratification, propagation or the matter of buttons or socks, must expect to cope with and deal in a certain amount of quibble, subterfuge, concealments, and double, deep-dyed prevarication.
Martyrs and persecutors are the same type of man. As to which is the persecutor and which the martyr, this is only a question of transient power.
Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual you so admire.
A creed is an ossified metaphor.