No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.