“The ancients, sir, are the ancients, and we are the people of today.”

Tobacco is the passion of honest men and he who lives without tobacco is not worthy of living.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

I recover my property wherever I find it.

There is no reward so delightful, no pleasure so exquisite, as having one’s work known and acclaimed by those whose applause confers honor.

Everything that’s prose isn’t verse and everything that isn’t verse is prose. Now you see what it is to be a scholar!

Sometimes I feel something akin to rage At the corrupted morals of this age!

Sharing with Jupiter is never a dishonor.

With a smile we should instruct our youth.

People don’t mind being mean; but they never want to be ridiculous.

Birth is nothing where virtue is not.

If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble.

There is nothing so necessary for men as dancing.

I always do the first line well, but I have trouble doing the others.

The road is long fro the project to its completion.

The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.

Nothing can be fairer, or more noble, than the holy fervor of true zeal.

When Darwin published his conclusion that man was descended from an apelike ancestor who was again descended from a still lower type.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains.

Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.

Baseball, more than any other sport, has a magical way of connecting fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren and ancestors back down the line. – From The Brooklyn Nine

But if people want to swim in the Thames, if they want to take their lives into their own hands, then they should be able to do so with all the freedom and exhilaration of our woad-painted ancestors.

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

After all, our families–our ancestors–are our identities. Biology is destiny.

We are all motivated far more than we care to admit by characteristics inherited from our ancestors which individual experiences of childhood can modify, repress, or enhance, but cannot erase.