“The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.”

“Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”

“Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.”

“I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened”

“Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.”

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain. during the Following the Equator tour. True love is the only heart disease that is best left to "run on"--the only affection of the heart for which there is no help, and none desired. The course of free love never runs smooth.

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

If you want love and abundance in your life, give it away.

Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes-none knows whence-and cannot explain itself.

You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.

Love is an irreresisistible desire to be irresistibily desired.

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my lifelong keeping. You cannot see its waves as they flow toward you, darling, but in these lines you will hear...the distant beating of its surf.

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one's self-approval.

Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality

Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my lifelong keeping. You cannot see its waves as they flow toward you, darling, but in these lines you will hear...the distant beating of its surf.

Love is madness, if thwarted it develops fast.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things 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. 

“Just when I thought I was learning how to live, 'twas then I realized I was learning how to die.”

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

“Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head.”

“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.”

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.”

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

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

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”

“A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.”

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

“When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.”

“There's one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he's crooked.”

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

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

“Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. ”

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.”

“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”

“All right, then, I'll go to hell.”

“Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.”

“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”

“Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

“We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.”

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

“Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.”

“Familiarity breeds contempt and children.”

“Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.”

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”