Father sticks to it that anything that promises to pay too much can't help being risky.

it was always insolent for a common man to take a chair in the presence of a lady - the word LADY, we may be sure, capitalized in her mind, and denoting not sex but rank.

You can't wish a body any worse luck than to get what he wants.

Almost anything is enough to keep alive someone who wishes nothing for himself but time to write music.

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.

History is worth reading when it tells us truly what the attitude toward life was in the past.

Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person as free as possible to arrange his own life. This freedom is the only climate in which (we feel) a human being may create his own happiness. ... Character itself lies deep and secret below the surface, unknown and unknowable by others. It is the mysterious core of life, which every man or woman has to cope with alone, to live with, to conquer and put in order, or to be defeated by.