Poems List

If the knocking at the door is loud and long, it is not opportunity, it is your relatives.

If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would never wish a second look.

Good manners are made up of letting people tell you what you already know.

I am not telling you not to keep money but let not money keep you.

Don’t let sleeping dogs lie if they are lying on your way to success.

Beware of laugh at and laugh with; the only people who laugh at you are the ones who pretend to laugh with you.

Always learn to accept ups and downs of life, because it clearly does offer.

water skiing is a way of life

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, nor more wise when he had.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

The nearer society approaches to divine order, the less separation will there be in the characters, duties, and pursuits of men and women. Women will not become less gentle and graceful, but men will become more so. Women will not neglect the care and education of their children, but men will find themselves ennobled and refined by sharing those duties with them; and will receive, in return, co-operation and sympathy in the discharge of various other duties, now deemed inappropriate to women. The more women become rational companions, partners in business and in thought, as well as in affection and amusement, the more highly will men appreciate home.

But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later.

None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.

That man's best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature's infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.

Reverence is the highest quality of man's nature; and that individual, or nation, which has it slightly developed, is so far unfortunate. It is a strong spiritual instinct, and seeks to form channels for itself where none exists; thus Americans, in the dearth of other objects to worship, fall to worshiping themselves.

A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.