We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it.

Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly every one who tries his power touches the walls of his being.

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

How many wars have been caused by fits of indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love of woman than by the hate of man.

It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.

The thing generally raised on city land is taxes.

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

There isn't a wife in the world who has not taken the exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled him in her own mind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered him after designs and specifications of her own.

There was never a nation great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.

No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.

There is nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess by a woman.

One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no experience, but needs some practice to be a good one.

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

Lettuce is like conversation; it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it.

The boy who expects every morning to open into a new world finds that today is like yesterday, but he believes tomorrow will be different.

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

People always overdo the matter when they attempt deception.

A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.

Goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does out of a sweet apple roasted before the fire.

Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration.

We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it.

No one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure.

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.

Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments.

There is no such thing as absolute value in this world. You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you.

There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.

A cynic might suggest as the motto of modern life this simple legend Just as good as the real.

One of the best things in the world to be is a boy it requires no experience but needs some practice to be a good one.

The boy who expects every morning to open into a new world finds that today is like yesterday but he believes tomorrow will be different.

To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.

Snobbery, being an aspiring failing, is sometimes the prophecy of better things.

Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

One must do no violence to nature, nor model it in conformity to any blindly formed chimera.

The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.

Do not fear lest you should meditate too much upon Him and speak of Him in an unworthy way, providing you are led by faith. Do not fear lest you should entertain false opinions of Him so long as they are in conformity with the notion of the infinitely perfect Being.

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.

Fear, conformity, immorality: these are heavy burdens. They drain us of creative energy. And when we are drained of creative energy, we do not create. We procreate, but we do not create.

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.

There is a very well-defined procedure that allows the Vatican to raise issues with a particular theologian about something that does not appear in conformity with the Catholic faith. It is not always easy to make this determination.

The real end of prayer is not so much to get this or that single desire granted, as to put human life into full and joyful conformity with the will of God.

The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences.

Unfortunately what came out of it was also kind of an imitation community with a lot of mindless conformity.

The hired preachers of all sects, creeds, and religions, never do, and never can, teach any thing but what is in conformity with the opinions of those who pay them.

Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.