Always obey your parents – when they are present.
The average American’s simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak.
At 50, a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass.
What a man misses mostly in heaven is company.
The miracle or the power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application and perseverance under the promptings of a brave, determined spirit.
I do see that there is an argument against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind, the awful famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release.
The self taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers, and besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done.
When I was fourteen years old, I was amazed at how unintelligent my father was. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was astounded how much he had learned in the last seven years.
Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.
The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is being attacked, and every man will be glad of these conscience-soothing falsities.
I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have so much of it.
We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things.
His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.
He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.
Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.
When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.
It will take mind and memory months and possibly years to gather together the details, and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss.
That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters.
Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail.