Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

The most successful detectives owe their success to noticing small signs. Scouts are natural detectives and never let the smallest detail escape them. These small things are called by Scouts ‚Sign.‘

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

The pagan loves the earth in order to enjoy it and confine himself within it; the Christian in order to make it purer and draw from it the strength to escape from it.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.

Oh, this base heart of ours! Hath it not enough tinder in it to set on fire the course of nature? If a spark do but fall into it, any one of our members left to itself would dishonour Christ, deny the Lord that bought us, and turn back into perdition.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Nature is not human hearted.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

Chavez, who came out of the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, is methodical and tireless. I have observed him over the course of 17 years, since his first visit to Cuba. He is an extremely humanitarian and law-abiding person; he has never taken revenge on anybody.

Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.

Temptation is a woman’s weapon and man’s excuse.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

Man is by nature a political animal.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

I couldn’t take pictures of green rolling hills.

What is a farm but a mute gospel?

Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.