Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.

The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.

The lonely sunsets flare forlorn Down valleys dreadly desolate; The lonely mountains soar in scorn As still as death, as stern as fate.

There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't sit still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Their's is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest.

I have no doubts that the Devil grins, As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my “literary” sins – The other kind don’t matter.

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones who win in the lifelong race.