The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.
Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Love prefers twilight to daylight.
The Amen of nature is always a flower.
Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
Have the courage to act instead of react.
Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!
The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it.
We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.
Memory is a net: one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.
Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.
I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.
Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else - very rarely to those who say to themselves, 'Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!'.
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.
