“We’d never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.”

No one has ever achieved anything from the smallest to the greatest unless the dream was dreamed first.

The only stupid thing about words is the spelling of them.

In these days when we feed those who are not hungry, we are stealing from those who are starving, even though the food is our own.

These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves — they’re good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on ’em.

Vices are simply overworked virtues.

Remember well, and bear in mind, a constant friend is hard to find.

Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I’ll remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don’t remember me at all.

If the members of a home are ill-temperered and quarrelsome, how quickly you feel it when you enter the house. You may not know just what is wrong, but you wish to make your visit short.

We heap up around us things that we do not need as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.

Far worst of all, the fever had settled in Mary’s eyes, and Mary was blind.

This earthly life is a battle,’ said Ma. ‘If it isn’t one thing to contend with, it’s another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and more thankful for your pleasures.

When Pa was at home the gun always lay across those two wooden hooks above the door. … The gun was always loaded, and always above the door so that Pa could get it quickly and easily, any time he needed a gun.

These happy golden years are passing by, these happy golden years.

Every job is good if you do your best and work hard. A man who works hard stinks only to the ones that have nothing to do but smell.

Her blue eyes were still beautiful, but they did not know what was before them, and Mary herself could never look through them again to tell Laura what she was thinking without saying a word.

Many a good beginning makes a bad ending.

As you take a few minutes each day to quiet your mind, you will discover a nice benefit: you’re everyday, ordinary life will begin to seem far more extraordinary.

Education in its early stages always begins with fault-finding, but when it is complete, it sees the positive element in everything.

Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.

In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be made.

Perhaps their attacks on my character meant that the hour was ripe for my career to begin in earnest.

But what is great can only begin great.

Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle – friendship can only exist between good men.