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"Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother."
"In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them."
"It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action."
"The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed."
"When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set."
"One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom."
"Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, 'It was a good show,' when the curtain falls."
"When you take a bath, you are civilized, when you don't take a bath, you are cultured."
"Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey."
"If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements."
"The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous."
"What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?"
"A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already."
"When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice."
"If the early Chinese people had any chivalry, it was manifested not toward women and children, but toward old people."
"By association with natures enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also."
"When the mirror meets with an ugly woman, when a rare ink-stone finds a vulgar owner, and when a good sword is in the hands of a common general, there is utterly nothing to be done about it."
"I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it."
"All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell."
"I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud."
"I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death."
"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."
"Neckties strangle clear thinking."
