In an audience of rough people a generous sentiment always brings down the house. In the tumult of war both sides applaud a heroic deed.

The first wild-flower of the year is like land after sea.

To be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country.

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

Do not waste a minute - not a second - in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it.

What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?

How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,--a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one's children rich.

There is certainly no defence or water -proof garment against adverse fortune which is, on the whole, so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.

The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable.

We are the windows through which our children first see the world. Let us be conscious of the view.

We are currently facing many hurdles, BUT will never lose the sight of infinite hope.

Americans cannot realize how many chances for mental improvement they lose by their inveterate habit of keeping six conversations when there are twelve in the room.

Being rich and thin isn't everything.

Rome has grown since its humble beginnings that it is now overwhelmed by its own greatness.

Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again.

We're just like a movie based on a book-- almost, but not quite as good.

All history is biography.

John Travolta, who said, My Saturday night fever was nothing compared to my Sunday morning rash. Never got a dinner!