Henry S. Haskins

"Man is sadly retarded by allowable imperfections."

"Thoughts left unsaid are never wasted."

"It is only an uncivilized world that would worship civilization."

"The tongues of conscience need a conscience of their own to keep them from speaking before they know what they are talking about."

"No conscience which is a palimpsest of the consciences of others is a safe guide."

"Avoid membership in a body of persons pledged to only one side of anything."

"If we exiled our sins, our virtues would get lonely without their old sparring partners."

"When study becomes labor, we had better change the subject-matter as quickly as possible."

"Only occasional hours meet our full requirements."

"If you obtain provision for yourself of spiritual abundance, don’t throw the surplus at people’s heads; feed it back into your own industry as capital for the production of more abundance."

"There is not an ounce of our former strength which is not doing some sort of job, right now."

"Our portion of life is the whole thing for us."

"Proud souls in the true sense are never humbled by adversity."

"Remembrance of hopes that were silly has an especial tenderness, for much of their silliness came from a thoughtless credulity which we would be glad to have back again."

"… memories that never ride anything but sound waves."

"Dive where the water is deep."

"The man who has a dogmatic creed has more time left for his business."

"It would be as natural for a full-grown tiger to mew as for a man released from the slavery of imitations ever to go back to his neighbor again with: “What do you think of this? What do you advise about that?”"

"There never is any diminution of the vast majority, indifferent to what they are, whence they came, and whither they go, who rush from business to pastime, and from pastime back to business, leaving no vacancy into which the unknown might slip a little experimental greatness."

"Twenty is in hot haste to become a year older and cast its first vote, which Forty will know was cast like the legendary pearls."

"It is the honest lies we tell—statements factually correct and essentially deceiving—which debauch our manhood and stunt our growth."

"Some have half-baked ideas because their ideals are not heated up enough."

"Many a superior brain is blockaded by inferior thoughts."

"Vacant minds have their uses, yet it seems a pity to waste first-class bodies on them."

"The unfortunate who has to travel for amusement lacks capacity for amusement."

"The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn."

"Make a party over your negative thoughts, assuring them that they are the safest, the most cautious, company you have ever kept. At first they will swallow your flattery, but then suddenly, stricken with shame, and knowing themselves for the impostors they are, out and off they will go."

"Some talk in quarto volumes and act in pamphlets."

"We cannot be too earnest, too persistent, too determined, about living superior to the herd instinct."

"Many of our intentions die after we have put their harness on."

"The darkness around us might somewhat light up if we would first practice using the light we have on the place we are."

"The way to get the most out of a victory is to follow it with another that makes it look small."

"A soul which is truly in earnest is not above disabling the body to discourage dangerous competition."

"When you start to indulge yourself, remember it is what they do with invalids and children."

"Many of us are impersonations of what we know we ought to be."

"Be a sincere effort never so misguided, to laugh at it is a breach of faith with decency."

"We demand about everything of ourselves but discrimination in what we demand."

"Ugly facts are a challenge to beautify them."

"There are many branches of learning, but only the one solid tree-trunk of wisdom."

"The art of a pedant is to divert his pupils from noticing the smallness of his puddle, and to make them attribute his apparent size to his being a really big toad."

"It is not so much tutoring that the minds needs, but clearer recognition and better use of what it already knows."

"It is the semi-learned who scorn the ignorant; the learned know too much about them for that."

"The highest grades of humanity have passed through the millstones more than once."

"Man is liberated from his illusions to make room for a fresh set."

"The rare individual who has learned to govern himself is too fed up with the labor of it to want to govern anybody else."

"Academic questions are interlopers in a world where so few of the real ones have been answered."

"It is when we start to discipline our mind that we discover how many undisclosed relationships it already has."

"Sedate ignorance is the last stage of deterioration."

"Imitation can acquire pretty much everything but the power which created the thing imitated."

"Symbols have a trick of stealing the show away from the thing they stand for."