The reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneath the oppressions of his age. He can only get a vision of the unselfish forces in the world by appealing to them, and every appeal is a call to arms. If he fights he must fight, not one man, but a conspiracy. He is always at war with a civilization. On his side is proverbial philosophy, a galaxy of invisible saints and sages, and the half-developed consciousness and professions of everybody. Against him is the world, and every selfish passion in his own heart.

Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green, That creepeth o'er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. . . . . Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the ivy green.

A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry is to a woman.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. -Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 5.

The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebble to vote.

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

The greatest miracle of love is the cure of coquetry.

Be of use, but don't be used.

A great fortune depends on luck, a small one on diligence.

There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people: we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.

We should wage war not to win war, but to win peace.

At 20 years of age the will reigns; at 30 the wit; at 40 the judgment.

If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you're old.

All crush'd and stone-cast in behaviour, She stood as a marble would stand, Then the Saviour bent down, and the Saviour In silence wrote on in the sand.

We never know the worth of water 'til the well is dry.

Two hundred million Americans, and there ain't two good catchers among 'em.

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity.... But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.

In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration, by decrease of life. Only then can a shock from outside put an end to the whole.

What we know is not much; what we do not know is immense.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.