I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.

One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.

The worst thing you can do to a man is to tell him he can have what he wants.

It is sound statesmanship to add two battleships every time our neighbour adds one and two stories to our skyscrapers every time he piles a new one on top of his to threaten our light. There is no limit to this soundness but the sky.

If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me Napoleonic in its grandeur.

Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.