What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?

The first wild-flower of the year is like land after sea.

To be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country.

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

Do not waste a minute - not a second - in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it.

How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,--a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one's children rich.

There is certainly no defence or water -proof garment against adverse fortune which is, on the whole, so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.

The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable.

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.

Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.

Whether is is a good or bad deal depends, for money does not always keep its value, unlike mankind, whose value is always the same, everything and nothing.

I like spending time with healthy people whose brains are turned on.

Only a happy mind will see the beauty of a beautiful view! For the sad mind everywhere looks gloomy!

Our loving Lord is not just present, but nearer than the thought can imagine - so near that a whisper can reach Him.

I'm a former federal prosecutor, I've fought terrorists and won and when we get back in the White House we will fight terrorists and win again and America will be safe.

Come on, if you don't win tonight it doesn't mean you're not a good person, it just means you're not a good actor.

I'm learning to hate the sound of my own voice.

I like to see Quentin (Roosevelt) practicing baseball. It gives me hope that one of my boys will not take after his father in this respect, and will prove able to play the national game.

I mean, in terms of alternatives, some people have suggested for example that why don't we - why isn't America doing what Berkshire Hathaway is doing? Why isn't that a better deal for America?