It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method.

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

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

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

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

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

To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.

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

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

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.

Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of pilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to any satisfactory haven.

True faith is when you see the harvest before you plant the seed.

A lot of artists start out as failed poets, then move on to being failed short-story writers before they finally break through to the big time and become failed novelists.

You cannot hide your true self forever.

We define a world. We build a house, then after building the house we enter into it and we never leave it.

A day might just be twenty-four hours but sometimes getting through one seems as impossible as scaling Everest.

The whole point to being here, really, is to figure a way to get out.

The best soulwinners are those who go when it is convenient and then go when it is not convenient.

I was just thinking of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and how young they were when they died. I would like to be a pop icon who survives. I would like to be a living icon.

Be of good courage, my son, and remember that the best men always make themselves.

What grace is meant to do is to help good people, not to escape their sufferings, but to bear them with a stout heart, with a fortitude that finds its strength in faith.