All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.

To be a good loser is to learn how to win.

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.

Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.

Nothing happens unless first we dream.

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.

When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.

Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.

Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.

We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.

I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.

Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.