There must be such a thing as a child with average ability, but you can't find a parent who will admit that it is his child.

Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.

The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent - that is to triumph over old age.

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

There must be such a thing as a child with average ability, but you can't find a parent who will admit that it is his child.

I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings.

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

What is lovely never dies, put passes into other loveliness.

The ocean moans over dead men's bones.

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.

No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat; Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original.

A girl does not treat a possible lover with unvarying simplicity and directness. In all its phases, love is complex; friendship is not.

A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning that he does not perceive he is led - with what silken threads and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by, the soft silk threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!

A man may do worse than make what the world calls a not wholly happy marriage.

A man should have duties outside of himself; without them, he is a mere balloon, inflated with thin egotism and drifting nowhere.

Everyone ought to wish to marry; some ought to be allowed to marry; and others ought to marry twice - to make the average good.

Everywhere on the Continent, the tourist is looked upon as a bird to be plucked, and presently the bird himself feebly comes to regard plucking as his proper destiny and abjectly holds out his wing so long as there is a feather left on it.

In every age have mighty spirits dwelt unseen with man, biding the hour that needed them.

Nothing except time is wasted in Italy.

Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the Past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday.

The dead play a very prominent part in the experience of the wanderer abroad. The houses in which they were born, the tombs in which they lie, the localities they made famous by their good or evil deeds, and the works their genius left behind them are necessarily the chief shrines of his pilgrimage.

There is no man at once so unselfish and selfish as a man in love.

To be weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man.

To the mass of mankind - meaning also womankind - marriage may be the only possible thing; but to the individual, it may be the one thing impossible.

What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness.

What is newest to one in foreign countries is not always the people, but their surroundings, and those same little details of life and circumstance which make no impression on a man in his own land until he returns to it after a prolonged absence, and then they stand out very sharply for a while.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent--that is to triumph over old age.

What is lovely never dies but passes into another loveliness Star dust or sea foam Flower or winged air.

They fail and they alone who have not striven.

How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.

To keep the heart unwrinkled to be hopeful kindly cheerful reverent that is to triumph over old age.

Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings.

October turned my maple's leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers; Soon these will slip from out the twig's weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.

After a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and signs it with a rainbow.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Never underestimate a child's ability to get into more trouble.

We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn't, we'd go crazy.

To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

Handcuffing the ability of states and localities to develop clean fuels in the cheapest possible way, using local resources, is not sound or sensible policy.

I realised from a very early age that God gave me a gift, and that gift was to run, and I wanted to use it to the best of my ability.

My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.

The key to Operations at Wal-Mart is their ability to maintain the highest standards while at the same time getting things done with lockstep execution.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

The Stones are a different kind of group. I realized that when I joined them. It's not really so much their musical ability, it's just they have a certain kind of style and attitude which is unique.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn't want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.