Sit loosely in the saddle.

I consider the success of my day based on the seeds I sow, not the harvest I reap.

It is one of the worst things of sentiment that the voice grows to be more important than the words, and the speaker than that what is spoken.

I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.

I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.

It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.

Make the most of the best and the least of the worst.