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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!-incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea-and put him at the head of the procession.

All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.

It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained there were too many prehistoric toads in it.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

"I wish I owned half of that dog."

"Why?" somebody asked.

"Because I would kill my half."

The group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even, but found no light there, no expression that they could read. They fell away from him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him. One said:

"'Pears to be a fool."

"'Pears?" said another. "Is, I reckon you better say."

"Said he wished he owned half of the dog, the idiot," said a third. "What did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half? Do you reckon he thought it would live?"

It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped teething.

Somewhere in the world is the most invincible man. Just as somewhere is the most vulnerable.

I didnt know you could steal your own life. And I didnt know that it would bring you no more benefit than about anything else you might steal.

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

It's a life's work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong.