Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.
We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.
I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.
Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
The disembodied spirit is immortal there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns.
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.
If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
These are not dark days: these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived.
I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.
Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.
The flesh endures the storms of the present alone the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.
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