As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived.

Action

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Age and Aging

Age, like distance lends a double charm.

Books and Reading

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

Children

A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.

Contradiction

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent."

Conversation

And when you stick on conversation's burrs, don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.

Death and Dying

Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death -- of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

Doubt

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

Experts

Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.

Fame

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.

Genius

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

Humankind

People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, why wasn't it done the other way?

Ideas

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Instinct

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

Language

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

Life and Living

To live is to function. That is all there is in living.

Love

Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.

Mind

Our brains our seventy year clocks, the angel of life winds them up once and for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hands of the angel of resurrection.

Perception

Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.

Prejudice

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it will contract.

Retirement

Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?

Silence

And Silence, like a poultice, comes to heal the blows of sound.

Soldier

A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.

Stupidity

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

Thoughts and Thinking

Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.

Truth

Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.

Vision

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

Work

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.