Al David Quotes

It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women.

Thus the great civilizer sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World which the census-taker visits, and summons the savage there to surrender.

There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. ... A man sees only what concerns him.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town... he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.

I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.

The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read the.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.

Some men fish all their lives without knowing it is not really the fish they are after.

Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.

As for Doing-good...I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

I recollect it was settled by general consent that India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm part of the day.

The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity.

what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.

Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears however measured or far away.

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances.

When a dog runs at you whistle for him.

The frontiers are not east or west north or south but wherever a man fronts a fact.

Whate'er we leave to God God does and blesses us.

Simplicity simplicity simplicity. I say let your affairs be as two or three and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.

When I hear music I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest.

I'd like to start a family but you have to have a date first.

I think that there is nothing not even crime more opposed to poetry to philosophy ay to life itself than this incessant business.

Things do not change we change.

However mean your life is meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.

Where there is a brave man in the thickest of the fight there is the post of honor.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong as when you find a trout in the milk.

Experience is in the fingers and the head. The heart is inexperienced.

Friends will not only live in harmony but in melody.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new.

A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone.

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.

There is not so good an understanding between any two but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.

Not only must we be good but we must also be good for something.

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore though they should fall immediately they had better aim at something high.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

If I knew ... that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good I should run for my life.

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstances.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbours.

To know that we know what we know and that we do not know what we do not know that is true knowledge.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good be good for something.