George William Curtis

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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 test of civilization is its estimate of women.”

“Nature makes woman to be won and men to win.”

“While we read history we make history.”

“Happiness lies first of all in health.”

“Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom.”

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

“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.”

“Our common liberty is consecrated by a common sorrow.”