there is only one thing we do know and that is that we do not know anything.

power, after it has ceased from troubling, is the dominant passion in human nature.

All women want to be understood until they understand themselves.

Did any great genius ever enter the world in the wake of commonplace pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire? The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have been virtuous, none have been commonplace, and few have been happy.

A long while ago an eager group of reformers wrote to me asking if I could suggest anything that would improve the morals of the American people. I replied that the trouble with the American people in general was not lack of morals but lack of brains.

It is a pretty trick of authors to make nature ever in sympathy with man, but as a matter of fact she seldom is.

A little superstition is a good thing to keep in one's bag of precautions.