“If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.”

to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.

Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.

fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.

History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.

There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.

The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.

Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old; who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before.

There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.

There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.

The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.

We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.

Books that children read but once are of scant service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.

The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.

Learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.

The people here have been marvelous. The bowl committee has bent over backwards to make sure that our stay is an excellent one. The players have something to do if they choose every day. You couldn’t find a better place.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.

A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or an army, is expected to look backward as well as forward; but he must think only forward.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn’t so funny.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret.

When you’ve seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.