Quotes on Literature

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

I covered two presidents, LBJ and Nixon, who could no longer convince, persuade, or govern, once people had decided they had no credibility, but we seem to be more tolerant now of what I think we should not tolerate.

You have been trapped in the inescapable net of ruin by your own want of sense.

When strength is yoked with justice, where is a mightier pair than they?

Death is easier than a wretched life; and better never to have born than to live and fare badly.

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.