“Marriage, by making us more contented, causes us often to be less enterprising.”

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.

Poverty is only contemptible when it is felt to be so. Doubtless the best way to make our poverty respectable is to seem never to feel it as an evil.

A woman’s love, like lichens upon a rock, will still grow where even charity can find no soil to nurture itself.

Something of a person’s character may be observed by how they smile. Some never smile they only grin.

The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy.

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

The greatest happiness comes from the greatest activity.

Whether one talks well depends very much upon whom he has to talk to.

Few minds wear out; more rust out.

Heaven lent you a soul, Earth will lend a grave.

Within the sacred walls of libraries we find the best thoughts, the purest feelings, and the most exalted imaginings of our race.

Economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.

Excellence in art is largely the result of attention to minutiae, and–prayer.

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.

The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.

Free enterprise has done more to lift people out of poverty, to help build a strong middle class, to help educate our kids, and to make our lives better than all the programs of government combined.

Making a book is such a big enterprise.

It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.

You know that great prejudice exists against all successful business enterprise – the more successful, the greater the prejudice.

The corrupt establishment knows that we are a great threat to their criminal enterprise.

Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

In every enterprise is no greater evil than bad companionship.