There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. |
Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -- the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself. |
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed. |
Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man. |
A classic is a book which people praise and don't read. |
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. |
Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant. |
I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. |
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging? |
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. |
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. |
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. |
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. |
Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption -- no, for the Lie, as Virtue, as Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains.
My complaint, simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. ... If this finest of the fine art arts had everywhere received the attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament, or cry a single tear. I do not say this to flatter. I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition. |
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. |
One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed in it. They have also believed the world was flat. |
When in doubt, tell the truth. |
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