“It is not that I have accomplished too few of my plans, for I am not ambitious; but when I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.”
— Yeats, Reveries Over Childhood and Youth, 1914
“It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.” — Cary Grant
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” — Abraham Lincoln
“It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good.” — Helen Keller
“There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” — Logan Pearsall Smith
“I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those they provoke.” — Samuel Johnson
“It’s odd how soon one comes to look on every minute as wasted that is given to earning one’s salary.” — P.G. Wodehouse
In Book II, Chapter 9, of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, a sentence begins “For a time I stood regarding …” These words contain 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, and 9 letters.
(Thanks, Dheeraj.)
“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.” — Samuel Johnson
“I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: ‘The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.’ In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.” — Bertrand Russell
“What is patriotism but the love of the good things we ate in our childhood?” — Lin Yutang