George William Curtis

While we read history we make history.

The big mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen and all of a sudden they've reached puberty, they believe that they like women. Actually, you're just horny. It doesn't mean you like women any more at twenty-one than you did at ten.

The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows.

Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer.

It is not observed in history that families improve with time.

Our common liberty is consecrated by a common sorrow.

It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.

Nature makes woman to be won and men to win.

Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom.

Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory.

Anger is an expensive luxury in which only men of certain income can indulge.

Reputation is favorable notoriety as distinguished from fame, which is permanent approval of great deeds and noble thoughts by the best intelligence of mankind.

Imagination is as good as many voyages - and how much cheaper!

The test of civilization is its estimate of women.

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.

Happiness lies first of all in health.