Quotes to inspire and reflect

To eat is human, to digest, divine

Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt .

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

Never argue with people who buy ink by the gallon.

Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what a palladium is, but I am sure it is a good thing!

The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more restful .

It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.

Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.

The longing of my heart is a fairy portrait of myself: I want to be pretty; I want to eliminate facts and fill up the gap with charms .

I was born modest; not all over, but in spots.

No real estate is permanently valuable but the grave.

Let your joy be unconfined!

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them.

His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

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

Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.

All good things arrive unto them that wait - and don't die in the meantime.

Whatever you say, say it with convictio n

Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, & those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink.

All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.

When a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me.

What God lacks is convictions- stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something- not try to be everything.

Don't explain your author, read him right and he explains himself.

Patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the loudest .

An American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.

It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.

The cost of living hasn't effected its popularity.

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

A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes .

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.

I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.

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

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.