Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Age and Aging

Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.

Aid and Assistance

A man cannot be made comfortable without his own approval.

Anger

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

Awards

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.

Bereavement

A man's house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential -- there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

Books and Reading

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.

Boys

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

Character

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

Compliments

If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one.

Conformity

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.

Courage

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.

Creation

Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place of it? God had His opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly -- a lark which must have cost Him a regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.

Critics and Criticism

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

Dance and Dancing

On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there's any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.

Death and Dying

All say, How hard it is that we have to die -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

Deception

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Desire

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

Education

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Envy

Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.

Example

There is nothing so annoying as a good example!!

Experience

The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won't sit upon a cold stove lid, either.

Familiarity

Familiarity breeds contempt; and children.

Forgiveness

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

Friends and Friendship

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Growth

What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows -- it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

Happiness

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

Heaven

Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

Honesty

Honesty is the best policy -- when there is money in it.

Humankind

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

Humor

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Ignorance

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

Impossibility

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

Insanity

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.

Invention and Inventor

Accident is the name of the greatest of all inventors.

Kings

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.

Knowledge

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain't so.

Laughter

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Learning

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

Lies and Lying

One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.

Loneliness

Be good and you will be lonely.

Marriage

Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: The one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.

Modesty

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

Mothers

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Nations

Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.

Obscurity

Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.

Opinions

Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

Originality

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Perseverance

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.

Popularity

By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.

Prayer

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

Principles

I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.

Prosperity

When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.

Right and Rightness

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Sarcasm

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

Self-esteem

The most difficult We do not deal in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.

Smile

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Speakers and Speaking

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

Success

There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.

Taxes and Taxation

I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer.

Thoughts and Thinking

Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.

Travel and Tourism

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom.

Truth

I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

Vice

I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.

Walking

The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.

Wisdom

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.

Words

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write "metropolis" for seven cents, because I can get the same money for "city." I never write "policeman," because I can get the same price for "cop."... I never write "valetudinarian" at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Work

Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the "blessing" of idleness and won for us the "curse" of labor.

Writers and Writing

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

Youth

It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.