312 quotes found
“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedo...”
“Every library should try to complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
“I have never heard anyone profess indifference to a boat race. Why should you row a boat race? Why endure long months of pain in preparation of a fierce half hour, or even six minutes, that will le...”
“My experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out.”
“Every calling is great when greatly pursued.”
“I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility I think 'whatsoever thy hand findeth to do do it with thy might ' infinitely more important...”
“You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man and to the man with special talents this is a very special claim. It is required th...”
“An older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years.”
“The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
“To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.”
“The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one'...”
“If you think that I am going to bother myself again before I die about social improvement or read any of those stinking upward and onwarders - you err - I mean to have some good out of being old.”
“A man over ninety is a great comfort to all his elderly neighbours: he is a picket-guard at the extreme outpost: and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy must get by him before ...”
“A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.”
“Longevity is having a chronic disease and taking care of it.”
“The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions.”
“Thou oh my country hast thy foolish ways Too apt to purr at every stranger's praise.”
“If I had a formula for bypassing trouble I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favour. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treat...”
“Apology is only egotism wrong side out.”
“If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus you must not be thinking about yourself and equally you must not be thinking about your neighbor: you must be living in...”
