To return to the Epigram Guide Webpage.The only way a woman can reform a man is by antithesis. To inspire is something else.
Do not lose faith in humanity: there are over eighty million people in America who never played you a single nasty trick.
Love is an uplift and intoxication: eighty pounds of steam, with the monkeywrench on the blow-off; and the poem you write or the picture you paint is utilization of the exhaust.
Civilization is largely a matter of buttoning and unbuttoning.
I know, I know - Fate has hammered me, too, hammered my soul into better shape than it once was. Relax, cease the struggle, and you have nothing with which to fight.
Most people who pride themselves on riding a hobby don't - the hobby is in the saddle.
If you want to know what you think, make a speech.
Cultivate only those habits that you are willing should master you.
The learned professions have always persistently reflected the ignorance and superstitions of their time.
It is a good policy to leave a few things unsaid.
Don't aspire to be King of the Groucherinos - there are too many candidates now.
Minimize friction and create harmony. You can get friction for nothing, but harmony costs courtesy and self-control.
The graveyards are full of people the world could not do without.
Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.
God always gives us strength to bear the troubles of each day; but He never calculated on our piling the troubles past , and those to come, on top of those of today.
All success consists in this: You are doing something for somebody - benefiting humanity - and the feeling of success comes from the consciousness of this.
Give us the Bough, the Thou and the Jug in right proportion.
Great and wise men have ever loved laughter. The vain, the ignorant, the dishonest, the pretentious, alone have dreaded or despised it.
Is he sincere? Probably not, if he is always asking this question about others.
Urge your own spontaneous thought against all prudential considerations, and the world will believe in you, or hate you - the difference is small.
It requires a Pharaoh to develop a Moses, just as it took a George the Third to evolve George Washington. Blessed be stupidity!
And remember this: Yesterday's successes belong to yesterday, with all of yesterday's defeats and sorrows. The day is Here. The time is Now.
How beautiful that most of our troubles never happen!
When what you have done in the past looks large to you, you haven't done much today.
Do not dump your woes upon people - keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
To return to the Epigram Guide Webpage.