Quote collection
442 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves."
"Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness."
"Youth now flees on feathered foot."
"The physician...is the flower (such as it is) of our civilization."
"I smoke a pipe abroad, because To all cigars I much prefer it, And as I scorn you social laws, My choice has nothing to deter it."
"The obscurest epoch is to-day."
"A hanging in a good quarrel is an easy death they say, though I could never hear of any that came back to say so."
"A good conscience is eight parts of courage."
"There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well."
"When I was a boy, I was a bit puzzled, and hardly knew weather it was myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into. Now I know that it is myself, and stick to that."
"In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy."
"The smack of California earth shall linger on the palate of your grandson."
"There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water than his head could carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked old wild sea-songs, minding nobody... Often I have heard the house shaking with Yo-ho-ho and a bottle and rum, all the neighbours joining in for dear life with the fear of death upon them and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark. Fiften men on the dead man's chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil have done for the rest. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!"
"Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular-letter to the friends of him who writes it."
"Strange indeed is the attraction of the forest for the minds of men."
"He who has learned to love an art or science has wisely laid up riches against the day of riches."
"Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying, Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, My heart remembers how!"
"Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches; And charging along like troops in a battle, All through the meadows the horses and cattle"
"Cruel children, crying babies, All grow up as geese and gabies, Hated, as their age increases, By their nephews and their nieces."
"Away down the river, A hundred miles or more, Other little children Shall bring my boats ashore."