"The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, "Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home." And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure."

"Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar; and the drunkard who's the benefactor of the whole city."

"Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners — your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards — who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute."

"Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder."

"I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for — whether it's a field, or a home, or a country."

"I hate this play and every word in it."

"My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate — that's my philosophy."

"I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back — up the hill — to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover's Corners...Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking...and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. ...Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute? ...I'm ready to go back...I should have listened to you. That's all human beings are! Just blind people."

"That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those... of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know — that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness."

"Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense."

"A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way."

"People are meant to go through life two by two. 'Tain't natural to be lonesome."

"Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other."

"Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world."

"Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

"Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes!) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy."

"The most valuable thing I inherited was a temperament that does not revolt against Necessity and that is constantly renewed in Hope."

"I am not interested in the ephemeral — such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions."

"Love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it gives birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties."

"Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday."

"Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value."

"Many plays — certainly mine — are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them."

"I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island."

"Literature is the orchestration of platitudes."

"I hold that we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility."

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."

"He is a Presbyterian first and an artist second, which is just as comfortable as trying to be a Presbyterian first and a chorus girl second."

"Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."

"As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge."

"Death comes in its own time, in its own way. Death is as unique as the individual experiencing it."

"Time Is... Too slow for those who wait, Too swift for those who fear, Too long for those who grieve, Too short for those who rejoice, But for those who love, Time is Eternity. (Music and Other Poems, 1904)"

"Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul."

"The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride: The threshold high enough to turn deceit aside."

"Oh, come as comes the morn. Serene and strong and full of faith, America, arise, With steady hope and mighty help to join thy brave Allies. O dearest country of my heart, home of the high desire, Make clean thy soul for sacrifice on Freedom’s altar-fire: For thou must suffer, thou must fight, until the warlords cease, And all the peoples lift their heads in liberty and peace."

"Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan Bay, The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away: Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land."

"Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me! I want a ship that’s westward bound to plow the rolling sea, To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars."

"I know that Europe’s wonderful, yet something seems to lack; The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back."

"Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air; And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair; And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome; But when it comes to living, there is no place like home."

"No amount of energy will take the place of thought."

"The simple life which blandly ignores all care and conflict, soon becomes flabby and invertebrate, sentimental and gelatinous."

"Christ never asks us to give up merely for the sake of giving up, but always in order to win something better."

"How often a man has cause to return thanks for the enthusiasms of his friends! They are the little fountains that run down from the hills to refresh the mental desert of the despondent."

"Romantic love interests almost everybody, because almost everybody knows something about it, or would like to know."

"Every mountain is, rightly considered, an invitation to climb."

"The promotion from all-day picnics to a two weeks' camping-trip is like going from school to college."

"The mountain is voiceless and imperturbable; and its very loftiness and serenity sometimes make us the more lonely."

"For real company and friendship, there is nothing outside of the animal kingdom that is comparable to a river."

"I'm only wishing to go a-fishing; For this the month of May was made."

"He that planteth a tree is the servant of God, He provideth a kindness for many generations, And faces that he hath not seen shall bless him."

"But often faltering feet Come surest to the goal; And they who walk in darkness meet The sunrise of the soul."