The two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.
When an audience does not complain, it is a compliment, and when it does, it is a compliment, too, if unaccompanied by violence.
Honor is a harder master than the law.
One must keep one’s character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can’t, then assume one.
There’s some human instinct which makes a man treasure what he is not to make any use of, because everybody does not possess it.
I cannot keep from talking, even at the risk of being instructive.
If a spectacle is going to be particularly imposing I prefer to see it through somebody else’s eyes, because that man will always exaggerate. Then I can exaggerate his exaggeration, and my account of the thing will be the most impressive.
And how moving is the eloquence of the untaught when it is the heart that is speaking!
Sum all the gifts that man is endowed with, and we give our greatest share of admiration to his energy. And today, if I were a heathen, I would rear a statue to Energy and fall down and worship it!
When a person is accustomed to one hundred and thirty-eight in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not valuable.
Was it my conspicuousness that distressed me? Not at all. It was merely that I was not beautifully conspicuous but uglily conspicuous – it makes all the difference in the world.
It is not in the least likely that any life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it.
A good and wholesome thing is a little harmless fun in this world; it tones a body up and keeps him human and prevents him from souring.
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth.
A man may plan as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician circumstance steps in and takes the matter off his hands.
I believe I have had the most trouble with a portrait which I painted in installments – the head on one canvas and the bust on another.
No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a conscience, torpid through virtuous inaction, are more to me than corner lots and praise.
To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology.
But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery – go!
They spell it da Vinci and pronounce it da Vinchy. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.