“The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn’t your real life.”

A well begun is half ended.

I expect that all of us get pretty much what we deserve of appreciation.

Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can’t be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!

The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way.

I am sure it is one’s duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one’s own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.

It seems sometimes as if one were powerless to do any more from within to overcome troubles, and that help must come from without.

Congenial labor is the secret of happiness.

A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one’s movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation.

The test of a good letter is a very simple one. If one seems to hear the other person talking as one reads, it is a good letter.

I have known some quite good people who were unhappy, but never an interested person who was unhappy.

I think I feel rather differently about sympathy to what seems the normal view. I like just to feel it is there, but not always expressed.

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.

As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.

One’s mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars; General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer: For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director.

That’s my only goal. Surround myself with funny people, and make sure everyone has a good time and works hard.

It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.

I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.

My motto is more good times.

You cannot look at a person and tell whether they’re good or bad.

One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.