Top 83 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Dudley Warner - Page 2

One discovers a friend by chance, and cannot but feel regret that 20 or 30 years of life may have been spent without the least knowledge of him.

The world so quickly adjusts itself after any loss, that the return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even the circle most interested, into confusion.

The principal value of a garden is not understood. It is not to give the possessors vegetables and fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues - hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation.

You want to hate somebody, if you can, just to keep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself from becoming a mere mush of good-nature.

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method.

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman however, will use anything but the fly, except when he happens to be alone.

The tenure of a literary reputation is the most uncertain and fluctuating of all.

The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world.

The wise man does not permit himself to set up even in his own mind any comparisons of his friends. His friendship is capable of going to extremes with many people, evoked as it is by many qualities.

Woman is perpetual revolution, and is that element in the world which continually destroys and recreates.

If there was any petting to be done...he chose to do it. Often he would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, and then go away contented.

Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend absent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable.

It is only the fools who keep straining at high C all their lives.

Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.

The stranger who receives the rare gift of human kindness holds its value in his heart forever.

Nature is entirely indifferent to any reform. She perpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue.

Each age has its choice of the death it will die.

A boy has a natural genius for combining business with pleasure.

One of the advantages of pure congregational singing is that you can join in the singing whether you have a voice or not. The disadvantage is that your neighbor can do the same.

Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a piece of it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it.

I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do as Adam did in his garden... name things as I find them.

How many wars have been caused by fits of indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love of woman than by the hate of man?

A cynic might suggest as the motto of modern life this simple legend-"just as good as the real.