CLARENCE DAY

If you don't go to other men's funerals, they won't go to yours.

The ant is knowing and wise, but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation.

Ants are good citizens, they place group interests first.

Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.

Reason is the servant of instinct.

Too many moralists begin with a dislike of reality.

A moderate addiction to money may not always be hurtful; but when taken in excess it is nearly always bad for the health.

Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience.

Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character.

If your parents didn't have any children, there's a good chance that you won't have any.

We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways.

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided.

You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own.

Once a man has begun to accumulate money, it is unnatural to stop. He actually gets in a state where he wants more and more..

The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation.

Every maiden's weak and willin' When she meets the proper villian.

It is possible that our race may be an accident, in a meaningless universe, living its brief life uncared for, on this dark, cooling star: but even so - and all the more - what marvelous creatures we are! What fairy story, what tale from the Arabian Nights of the jinns, is a hundredth part as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians! It is so much more heartening, too, than the tales we invent. A universe capable of giving birth to many such accidents is - blind or not - a good world to live in, a promising universe. . . . We once thought we lived on God's footstool, it may be a throne.

The real world is not easy to live in. It is rough; it is slippery. Without the most clear-eyed adjustments we fall and get crushed. A man must stay sober; not always, but most of the time.

Ants are good citizens; they place group interest first. But they carry it so far, they have few or no political rights. An ant doesn't have the vote, apparently; he just has his duties.

Father expected a good deal of God. He didn't actually accuse God of inefficiency, but when he prayed his tone was loud and angry, like that of a dissatisfied guest in a carelessly managed hotel.

Babies are unreasonable; they expect far too much of existence. Each new generation that comes takes one look at the world, thinks wildly, "Is this all they've done to it?" and bursts into tears.

Real friendships among men are so rare that when they occur they are famous.

This is a hard and precarious world, where every mistake and infirmity must be paid for in full.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man.