When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.

Whatever your sex or position, life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck, and woe be to the coward. Whether passed on a bed of sickness or a tented field, it is ever the same fair play and admits no foolish distinction. Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.

A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.

As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.