Quotes from Charles Dudley Warner

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

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?

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

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no experience, but needs some practice to be a good one.

Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments

Hoeing in the garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obligated to, is nearly equal to the delight of going trouting.

Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration.

There was never a nation that became great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.

There is no such thing as absolute value in this world. You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you.

To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.

We are half ruined by conformity; but we should be wholly ruined without it.

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

The boy who expects every morning to open into a new world finds that today is like yesterday, but he believes tomorrow will be different.

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

To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life—this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.

No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have but a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.

New-England weather — it is a matter about which a great deal is said, but very little done.

Nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind.

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

No one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do but nearly every one who tries his power touches the walls of his being.

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.

A woman set on anything will walk right through the moral crockery without wincing.