I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.

Contentment is the only real wealth.

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.

My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.

Nature is man's teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.

I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am skeptical as to its results.

A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion.

My home is where I work, and I work everywhere.

Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age.

Good wishes alone will not ensure peace.

A recluse without books and ink is already in life a dead man.

Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety. ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.

There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.

Our standards of morality are begotten of the past needs of society, but is society to remain always the same?

I'm back in these regions of fumbling dark uncertain creation, but it's my one and only world, and I'll do the best I can.

I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.

To reach your target quicker, don’t lose your time by looking back!

There's not another drug in life that I'm glad I took but grass.

The most common and durable source of faction has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

Beauty intoxicates the eye, as wine does the body; both are morally fatal if indulged.

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.