Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

There are many ways to fall down, but there's only one way to stand up straight.

Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.

If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.

The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.

I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health.