Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
Keyword(s): Animal Rights , Humankind , Dogs , Pain

There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
Keyword(s): Civilization , Humor

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
Keyword(s): Experience , Folly

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.
Keyword(s): Animal Rights , Morality , Intellectual

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.
Keyword(s): Religion , Humankind , Happiness

It is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead.
Keyword(s): Death , Exaggeration

I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
Keyword(s): Prejudice

The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned in no other way.
Keyword(s): Cats , Experience

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
Keyword(s): Humor

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
Keyword(s): Luck

When red headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.
Keyword(s): Hair

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Keyword(s): Prejudice , Travel

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
Keyword(s): Emotions

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? - it is the same the angels breathe.
Keyword(s): Flying , Sky

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
Keyword(s): Government

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
Keyword(s): Sky

I can live for two months on a good compliment.
Keyword(s): Compliments

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.
Keyword(s): Religion

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
Keyword(s): Birth Control , Sex

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principle one was that they escaped teething.
Keyword(s): Dental

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
Keyword(s): Anger

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Keyword(s): Age , Smile

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Keyword(s): Life , Sanity

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Keyword(s): Age

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Keyword(s): Experience , Wisdom

The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
Keyword(s): Age

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
Keyword(s): Pessimism

As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.
Keyword(s): Writing

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.
Keyword(s): Age

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life that he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
Keyword(s): Childhood

I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that, my art is not above the ordinary.
Keyword(s): Horses

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them.
Keyword(s): Libraries

Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.
Keyword(s): Humankind

Custom is, to think a handsome thing in private but tame it down in the utterance.
Keyword(s): Conformity

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.
Keyword(s): Animals

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Keyword(s): Action

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Keyword(s): Religion

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
Keyword(s): Fear , Temptation

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Keyword(s): Food

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
Keyword(s): Intelligence

I am pushing sixty. That is enough exercise for me.
Keyword(s): Exercise

When a German dives into a sentence, you won't see him again until he emerges at the other end with the verb between his teeth.
Keyword(s): Language

When you cannot get a compliment in any other way pay yourself one.
Keyword(s): Compliments

Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it.
Keyword(s): Truth

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.
Keyword(s): Truth

If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.
Keyword(s): Media

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live.
Keyword(s): Bicycling

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
Keyword(s): Religion

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Keyword(s): Habits

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.
Keyword(s): Clothing

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
Keyword(s): Procrastination

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Keyword(s): Books , Life , Friendship

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
Keyword(s): Writing

Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Keyword(s): Golf

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
Keyword(s): Confidence , Genius

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Keyword(s): Self

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
Keyword(s): Civil Disobedience , Patriotism

The existing phrasebooks are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.
Keyword(s): Language

I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes.
Keyword(s): Tax

We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.
Keyword(s): Self

Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Keyword(s): Speaking

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Keyword(s): Investment , Science

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
Keyword(s): Investment , Money

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.
Keyword(s): Quotations

There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker.
Keyword(s): Poker

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
Keyword(s): Ignorance

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man's.
Keyword(s): Dogs

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Keyword(s): Life

Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
Keyword(s): Anger

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.
Keyword(s): Spring

Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied by drink.
Keyword(s): Alcohol

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
Keyword(s): Weather

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
Keyword(s): Spring

October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.
Keyword(s): Money

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
Keyword(s): Habits , Hypocrisy

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
Keyword(s): Soul

If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.
Keyword(s): Cats

If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.
Keyword(s): Kindness

It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake.
Keyword(s): Smoking

It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.
Keyword(s): Mind

Baccarat is a game whereby the croupier gathers in money with a flexible sculling oar, then rakes it home. If I could have borrowed his oar I would have stayed.
Keyword(s): Gambling

It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.
Keyword(s): Weather

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
Keyword(s): Education

In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
Keyword(s): Courage

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders.
Keyword(s): Patriotism

Let us endeavor to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Keyword(s): Carpe Diem

We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.
Keyword(s): Conformity

My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart - a heart so large that everybody's joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.
Keyword(s): Mothers

Every man is in his own person the whole human race, with not a detail lacking.
Keyword(s): Humankind

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
Keyword(s): Animal Rights

I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Keyword(s): Travel

The finest clothing made is a person's skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.
Keyword(s): Clothing

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Keyword(s): Health

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
Keyword(s): Jealousy

In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has.
Keyword(s): Media

Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.
Keyword(s): Media

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel....
Keyword(s): War

Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat.
Keyword(s): Humankind

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
Keyword(s): Carpe Diem , Death

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Keyword(s): Conformity

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.
Keyword(s): Health

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.
Keyword(s): Temptation

We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years.
Keyword(s): Math

In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.
Keyword(s): Language

I am thankful that the good God creates us all ignorant. I am glad that when we change His plans in this regard, we have to do it at our own risk.
Keyword(s): Medical

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.
Keyword(s): Vanity

Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
Keyword(s): Love , Marriage

It is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.
Keyword(s): Telephones

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.
Keyword(s): Cats , Grammar

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.
Keyword(s): Civilization

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Keyword(s): Literature

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Keyword(s): Attitude

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
Keyword(s): Tax

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.
Keyword(s): Courage

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.
Keyword(s): Censorship

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Keyword(s): Conformity

A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to us than the 99 which we had to work for, and the money won at Faro or in the stock market snuggles into our hearts in the same way.
Keyword(s): Investment , Money

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Keyword(s): Imagination

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
Keyword(s): Death

It is in the heart that the values lie. I wish I could make him understand that a loving heart is riches, and riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.
Keyword(s): Heart

Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.
Keyword(s): Jewelry

To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.
Keyword(s): Promises

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
Keyword(s): Learning

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Keyword(s): Truth

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work.
Keyword(s): Perspective

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Keyword(s): Courage , Morality

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
Keyword(s): Truth

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
Keyword(s): Honesty , Truth

If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile.
Keyword(s): Swimming

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
Keyword(s): Food

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Keyword(s): Books

I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't.
Keyword(s): Truth

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
Keyword(s): Clothing

But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface.
Keyword(s): Food

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
Keyword(s): Worry

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
Keyword(s): History

In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race - never quite sane in the night.
Keyword(s): Night

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
Keyword(s): Happiness

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't.... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
Keyword(s): Animal Rights

Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.
Keyword(s): Prayer

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.
Keyword(s): Babies

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
Keyword(s): Writing

Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
Keyword(s): Humankind

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written.
Keyword(s): Self

It's good sportsmanship not to pick up lost balls while they are still rolling.
Keyword(s): Golf

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Keyword(s): Statistics

Lord save us all from... a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
Keyword(s): Hope

A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to us than the 99 which we had to work for.
Keyword(s): Gambling

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
Keyword(s): Cats

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
Keyword(s): Opportunity

October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.
Keyword(s): Investment