Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.

People are always a little disconcerted when you don't recognize them, they are so important to themselves, it is a shock to discover of what small importance they are to others. [The human element]

It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.

I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.