Emotions and Feelings

He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’tstraight.

Thanksgiving Day . Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks, now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!—incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!—incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.

Dying man couldn’t make up his mind which place to go to—both have their advantages, “heaven for climate, hell for company!”

Don’t you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardnessand stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to.

A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.

A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held itin my hand. I was trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

We said there warn’t no home like a raft, afterall. Other places do seem so cramped up andsmothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

In the matter of intellect the ant must bea strangely overrated bird. During manysummers, now, I have watched him, whenI ought to have been in better business, andI have not yet come across a living ant thatseemed to have any more sense than a deadone. I refer to the ordinary ant, of course; I have had no experience of those wonderfulSwiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute about religion.

The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by abell; she gits up by a bell—everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucketof whitewash and a long-handled brush. Hesurveyed the fence, and all gladness left himand a deep melancholy settled down upon hisspirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feethigh. Life to him seemed hollow, and existencebut a burden.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucketof whitewash and a long-handled brush. Hesurveyed the fence, and all gladness left himand a deep melancholy settled down upon hisspirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feethigh. Life to him seemed hollow, and existencebut a burden.

To do something, say something, seesomething, before anybody else—these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

Having looked the past in the eye, having asked for forgiveness and having made amends, letus shut the door on the past—not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.

I’ve just read your lousy review [of a concert by Truman’s daughter, Margaret]. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.” It seems to me that you are afrustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppycock as was in the back section of the paperyou work for it shows conclusively that you’reoff the beam and at least four of your ulcersare at work. Some day I hope to meet you.When that happens you’ll need a new nose, alot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps asupporter below!

Not only does democracy make everyman forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens to the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.

Democratic nations care but little for whathas been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure. . . . Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

He knows all about art, but he doesn’t knowwhat he likes.

Then, with that faint fleeting smile playingabout his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

Then, with that faint fleeting smile playingabout his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

I hear many condemn these men because theywere so few. When were the good and the braveever in a majority?

I had three chairs in my house; one forsolitude, two for friendship; three for society.When visitors came in larger and unexpectednumbers there was but the third chair for themall, but they generally economized the room bystanding up.