“It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.”

Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.

It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don’t be afraid to follow it.

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

The mind of man is capable of anything.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts, all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.

Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.

To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.

I don’t like work but I like what is in work – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – which no other man can ever know.

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.

Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?

He decided that we suffer from great temporal homesickness for the decade we were born in.

The young man, born to rule England, which his dying father commended to him. Once his father is dead, London will cavil. The kingdom is taken back from his son.

Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.

If you’re born poor it’s not your fault but if you die poor it’s your fault.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

I was born to chase peace and love wild things. I was born a beautiful bohemian paradox.

The day I made peace with my pain was the day I was born again.