NORMAN DOUGLAS

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertising.

Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.

Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it.

The longer one lives, the more one realizes that nothing is a dish for every day.

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.

You can construct the character of a man and his age not only from what he does and says, but from what he fails to say and do.

A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.

The pine stays green in winter... wisdom in hardship.

To find a friend one must close one eye - to keep him, two.

There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide.

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes?

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.

It takes a wise man to handle a lie, a fool had better remain honest.

Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.

They who are all things to their neighbors cease to be anything to themselves.

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying.

No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble.

The law does not content itself with classifying and punishing crime. It invents crime.

Whenever there are enclosing walls, there are abuses behind them.

The present age, for all its cosmopolitan hustle, is curiously suburban in spirit.

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire.

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half-rude.

There is so much goodness in real life- do let us keep it out of our books.

The business of life is to enjoy oneself; everything else is a mockery.