Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful - while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with - he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?

I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.

We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me.

When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,--none of the servants.

You never gain something but that you lose something.