I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do or any place I wanted to be more than home. Where I can walk around the yard, sweeping leaves off the slate paths to my heart's content. Where I can spend all day in my pajamas puttering around the house, o...
From "Lady In Waiting" in the anthology The Morgue : Now I have yet to meet the corpse could hold up its end of a conversation, so at most I might whistle while fixin’ one up ‘stead of engagin’ myself in any small talk that’s goin’ to be so...
THE TRUTH ABOUT PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION • American fifteen-year-olds rank thirty-fifth out of fifty-seven developed countries in math and literacy. • 30 percent of public school students don’t graduate from high school. • Every day, 7,000 kid...
The bachelor is a peacock, the engaged man a lion, and the married man a jackass.
Dr. Frederick Treves: Am I a good man? Or a bad man?
The skilful employer of men will employ the wise man, the brave man, the covetous man, and the stupid man.
Hang a German, even if he is a good man.
The open house makes a good man of the thief.
If a rich man ate a snake, they would say it was because of his wisdom; if a poor man ate it, they would say it was because of his stupidity.
Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written.
Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.
In ordinary life, the action of a third party does not free the contractor from an obligation; but the advantage of making a contract with heaven is that intentions are valid currency.
We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
I want to make a difference. But get a job? I worry that will make the ordinary, like everybody else.
No fiction is good fiction unless it is true to life, and yet no life is worth relating unless it be a life out of the ordinary; and then it seems improbable like fiction.
It takes strength to be proud of yourself and to accept yourself when you know that you have something out of the ordinary about you.
It was like magic, but so much of magic is about misdirection, whereas so much of redemption is straightforward and ordinary, piercing true and lit with surprise.
I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy. Each of these innocents on the street is engulfed by a terror of their own ordinariness. They would do anything to be unique.
You don't have to be a hero to accomplish great things---to compete. You can just be an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.
Beyond the curve of his days he glimpsed neither superhuman happiness nor eternity--happiness was human, eternity ordinary.
Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
