“Well, did anything interesting happen today?' [my father] would begin. And even before the daily question was completed I had eagerly launched into my narrative of every play, and almost every pitc...”

“As a nation, we began by declaring that all men are created equal. We now practically read it all men are created equal, except negroes. When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read all men are...”

“If he could not go out into the world, the world could come to him.”

“Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.”

“We have the right to demand that if we find men against whom there is not only suspicion, but almost a certainty that they have had collusion with men whose interests were in conflict with the inte...”

“I hope to stand firm enough not to go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.”

“I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do...”

“To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.”

“I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organi...”

“Worry is like a rocking-chair. It gives you something to do buy gets you nowhere.”

“But if that was going to happen, it was going to happen whether or not he worried about it.”

“Perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.”