I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. There are subtleties which I cannot master at all - they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me - and this adverb plague is one of them.
After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?" I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?"
The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.
I hold that when a person dies / His soul returns again to earth; / Arrayed in some new flesh disguise / Another mother gives him birth / With sturdier limbs and brighter brain.
The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced.
As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page, gives intelligence of Ford's approach, and in her invention, and Ford's wife's distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.
If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment - giving to that word its exact significance.
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.
By taking these three steps you will get closer to the Gods: First, Say the Truth. Second: Don't let you get Angry. Third: Give, even though you have so little to give.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight, And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence; the next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature.