Quotes to inspire and reflect

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat .

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

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.

I try never to let my schooling get in the way of my education.

Life is short. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly and love truly .

Out of the public schools comes the greatness of the nation.

Simplified spelling is all right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far.

Politicians, old buildings, and prostitutes become respectable with age.

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way.

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

Good judgment comes from experience. And where does experience come from? Experience comes from bad judgment.

He liked to like people, therefore people liked him .

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.

Figures don't lie, but liars figure .

There is nothing so annoying as a good example!!

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

My memory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges.

In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

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

Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education .

The pause - that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish it.

At noon I observed a bevy of nude young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.

I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds.

Virtue has never been as respectable as money .

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.

An honest politician is an oxymoron.

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

In religion, India is the only millionaire... the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.

I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead--and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and they would be honest so much earlier.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it .

I am only human, although I regret it.

Always obey your parents - when they are present.

Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it or even diminish it.

Definite speech means clarity of mind.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.

Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute-but they all worship money.

There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.