If work were so pleasant, the rich would keep it for themselves.
Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.
We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.
I couldn’t bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn’t think about nothing else.
He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.
Temper is what gets most of us into trouble. Pride is what keeps us there.
It is noble to teach oneself; it is still nobler to teach others.
The most permanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of book teaching, but of experience.
There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency – and a virtue, and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency – and a vice.
There’s always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.
I’ve dealt with many crises in my life, but few will ever happen.
Don’t look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch it.
A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.
To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.
Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and reevaluation.
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.
How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.