The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses.Collection: Government
The most dangerous savages live in cities.Collection: Cities
Moral progress is a process of isolation; the mountain tops are lonely.Collection: Lonely
A man's life is like a well, not like a snake--it should be measured by its depth, not by its length.Collection: Life
Prose is a photography, poetry is a painting in oil-colors.Collection: Photography
Truth and eggs are useful only while they are fresh.Collection: Truth
The three most important events of human life are equally devoid of reason: birth, marriage and death.Collection: Marriage
Most reformers, like a pair of trousers on a windy clothesline, go through a vast deal of vehement motion, but stay in the same place.Collection: Reform
Patience is moral elasticity.Collection: Patience
The Devil is not afraid to sit on an altar.Collection: Devil
Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.Collection: Life
Exclusiveness is a characteristic of recent riches, high society, and the skunk.Collection: Pride
A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.Collection: Funny
God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to receive it.Collection: Funny
The habits of a young man are, like his coat, removable; the habits of an old man are like the drapery of a statue.Collection: Men
The living have their eyes opened by closing the eyes of the dead.Collection: Eye
It is easier to prevent thistles and habits than to uproot them.Collection: Habit
If the poet would avoid pepsis in his patients, his scalpel must be as clean as the surgeon's.Collection: Patient
We are plated with piety, not alloyed with it.Collection: Piety
Call it the Absolute, the Ideal, Perfection, Sanctity, Decency, or what you will, but strive toward it or you will smother in the morass.Collection: Perfection
Civilization is the world with its leg asleep.Collection: Civilization
The milk of human kindness should be brought fresh to the table every morning.Collection: Morning
The perfection of art is to conceal the sources.Collection: Art
The only thing in the world we really possess is our knowledge of the truth.Collection: Truth
Human truth is always soiled with falsehood.Collection: Truth
The bigger the dam of patience, the worse the flood when the dam breaks.Collection: Patience
Art is one of man's few serious activities.Collection: Art
You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.Collection: Character
Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.Collection: Life
The only real change in life comes with the consciousness of old age.Collection: Real
Friends made fast seldom remain fast.Collection: Friends
A woman, like a cross-eyed man, looks one way, but goes another--hence her mysteriousness.Collection: Women
A small poet repeats himself like a clock.Collection: Poet
A politician is like quicksilver: if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing under it.Collection: Political
A sin is nothing but a deordination of reason, but that is enough.Collection: Sin
The modern king has become a vermiform appendix: useless when quiet; when obtrusive, in danger of removal.Collection: Kings
When you are dealing with a child, keep all your wits about you, and sit on the floor.Collection: Inspirational
Suspicion is an owl that flies when the light is bad and catches only vermin for food.Collection: Light
Happiness and unhappiness differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one pressed in tin ... Each carries the same water.Collection: Happiness
The perjurer's mother told white lies.Collection: Mother
The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.Collection: Age
If you cultivate piety as an end and not a means, you will become a hypocrite.Collection: Hypocrite
Man usually thinks liberty is the power of doing what he likes to do. That is license.Collection: Men
Better a bald head than none at all.Collection: Funny
A drunkard is like a whiskey-bottle, all neck and belly and no head.Collection: Alcohol
Marriage is commonly a meal wherein the soup is better than the desert.Collection: Marriage
Humor wades across a brook, wit jumps over it.Collection: Wade
Worry is half impatience and half ignorance.Collection: Ignorance
The difference between a human being ten years of age and one fifty years of age lies altogether in the matter of toys.Collection: Lying