Use what talents you possess; The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.

I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me.

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.

The ultimate function of prophecy is not to tell the future, but to make it. Your successful past will block your visions of the future.

Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.

The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that's laughable is vanity.

He paints a dolphin in the woods, a boar in the waves.

The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees, Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees. Three centuries he grows, and three he stays Supreme in state; and in three more decays.

I find the medicine worse than the malady.

The hasty multitude Admiring enter'd, and the work some praise, And some the architect: his hand was known In heaven by many a tower'd structure high, Where scepter'd angels held their residence, And sat as princes.

It takes less time to do things right that to explain why you did it wrong.

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

Rulers do not reduce taxes to be kind. Expediency and greed create high taxation, and normally it takes an impending catastrophe to bring it down.

Feast of Martin, Monk, Bishop of Tours, 397 When no tensions are confronted and overcome, because insiders or outsiders of a certain class or group meet happily among themselves, then the one new thing, peace, and the one new man created by Christ, are missing; then no faith, no church, no Christ, is found or confessed. For if the attribute "Christian" can be given sense from Eph. 2, then it means reconciled and reconciling, triumphant over walls and removing the debris, showing solidarity with the "enemy" and promoting not one's own peace of mind but "our peace"... When this peace is deprived of its social, national, or economic dimensions, when it is distorted or emasculated so much that only "peace of mind" enjoyed by saintly individuals is left -- then Jesus Christ is being flatly denied. To propose, in the name of Christianity, neutrality or unconcern on questions of international, racial, or economic peace -- this amounts to using Christ's name in vain.

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.

As drifting logs of wood may haply meet On ocean's waters surging to and fro, And having met, drift once again apart, So, fleeting is the intercourse of men. E'en as a traveler meeting with the shade Of some o'erhung tree, awhile reposes, Then leaves its shelter to pursue his ways, So men meet friends, then part with them for ever.