“Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.”

The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.

Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change; they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

It’s a strange situation, but people will pay your fare to get you to go and tell them how to be happy.

You can’t be a person and a lady. If you’re a person, you can open the damned door yourself.

I never saw Portsmouth by day.

The curiosity of the neighbors about you, is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it

Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.

Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.

To live in the past is to miss today’s opportunities and tomorrow’s blessings.

I simply haven’t the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.

Vice is its own reward.

Never sweep. After four years the dirt gets no worse.

You fall out of your mother’s womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

What my parents thought of this, I don’t know. But they bore it. And the real problem was not my sin, but my unemployability.

hen you’re in your third adulthood, the one that leads to the grave, and you ask yourself, “What will I do between now and then?” Instead of thinking in terms of glamour, you start thinking in terms of reform – your contribution to the world.

The path that was entered upon only one hundred and fifty years ago … How young she is! It will be centuries before she will adopt that maturity of custom – the clothing of the grave – that some people believe she is already fitted for.

Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me, ‘Never! Never!’

We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum, trinkets, and a grave.

Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other’s battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit.

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.

Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers.

When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.