All Quotes

"The newspapers print what the people want, and thus does the savage still swing his club and flourish his spear."

"I am not sure just what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe it is a disposition to evade the payment of small bills."

"Do not dump your woes upon people — keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them."

"Men who marry for gratification, propagation or the matter of buttons or socks, must expect to cope with and deal in a certain amount of quibble, subterfuge, concealments, and double, deep-dyed prevarication."

"When you see a tomcat with his whiskers full of feathers, do not say "Canary!" — he'll take offense."

"Academic education is the act of memorizing things read in books, and things told by college professors who got their education mostly by memorizing things read in books."

"Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter's colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments."

"The weaknesses of the many make the leader possible—and the man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also. Discipleship is a degenerating process to all parties concerned. People who are able to do their own thinking should not allow others to do it for them."

"Making men live in three worlds at once — past, present and future has been the chief harm organized religion has done."

"Our admiration is so given to dead martyrs that we have little time for living heroes."

"Perfume; Any smell that is used to drown a worse one."

"Respectability is the dickey on the bosom of civilization."

"There is no such thing as success in a bad business."

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."

"The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods."

"The way to learn to earn a living is to go at it and earn a living."

"To remain on earth you must be useful, otherwise Nature regards you as old metal, and is only watching for a chance to melt you over."

"Why not be a top-notcher? A top-notcher is simply an individual who works for the institution of which he is a part, not against it."

"Woman's inaptitude for reasoning has not prevented her from arriving at truth; nor has man's ability to reason prevented him from floundering in absurdity."

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."

"No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one."

"I can not say specifically where your father and Mrs. Hubbard were when the torpedoes hit, but I can tell you just what happened after that. They emerged from their room, which was on the port side of the vessel, and came on to the boat-deck. Neither appeared perturbed in the least. Your father and Mrs. Hubbard linked arms — the fashion in which they always walked the deck — and stood apparently wondering what to do. I passed him with a baby which I was taking to a lifeboat when he said, "Well, Jack, they have got us. They are a damn sight worse than I ever thought they were." They did not move very far away from where they originally stood. As I moved to the other side of the ship, in preparation for a jump when the right moment came, I called to him, "What are you going to do?" and he just shook his head, while Mrs. Hubbard smiled and said, "There does not seem to be anything to do." The expression seemed to produce action on the part of your father, for then he did one of the most dramatic things I ever saw done. He simply turned with Mrs. Hubbard and entered a room on the top deck, the door of which was open, and closed it behind him. It was apparent that his idea was that they should die together, and not risk being parted on going into the water."

"I think of what Elbert Hubbard said. It struck me rather strangely the other day. He said: "If you are going to reform the world you had better begin with yourself, and there will be one rogue less in the world." Of course, I did not want to apply that to myself, but I would not object to applying it to you."

"I needed to sing — desperately. My voice poured out more easily because I was no longer singing for anyone's approval; I was beyond caring about the public's reaction, I just wanted to enjoy myself. … I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity, as a result of my childrens' problems. I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not — more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving."

"A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn't let them get her down."

"There is a growing strength in women but it's in the forehead, not the forearm. Men will always be attracted to women with nice soft arms and a fleshy bosom."

"Why should I go when it's going so good? … I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar."

"So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment."

"I've always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up. I'm not about to change now."

"My voice had a long, nonstop career. It deserves to be put to bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it can still do what it used to do. It can't."

"Art is the signature of civilizations."

"I really do believe I can accomplish a great deal with a big grin, I know some people find that disconcerting, but that doesn't matter."

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

"In youth, we run into difficulties. In old age, difficulties run into us."

"You don't always get what you ask for, but you never get what you don't ask for... unless it's contagious!"

"Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light."

"Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality."

"Attachment to spiritual things is... just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else."

"Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance."

"A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment."

"Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood. We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands. Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star."

"Character, not circumstances, makes the man. It is more important that we be prepared for voting than that we vote, more important that we be prepared to hold office than that we hold office, more important that we be prepared for the highest recognition than that we be recognized."

"In working out our destiny, while the main burden and center of activity must be with us, we shall need in a large measure the help, the encouragement, the guidance that the strong can give the weak. Thus helped, we of both races in the South shall soon throw off the shackles of racial and sectional prejudice and rise above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness into that atmosphere, that pure sunshine, where it will be our highest ambition to serve man, our brother, regardless of race or past conditions."

"I think I have learned that the best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else."

"There is no power on earth, that can neutralize the influence of a high, pure, simple and useful life."

"The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do."

"Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him."

"In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists."

"There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up."