Quotes by Charles Dudley Warner

“Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure.””

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

“We select and set aside as literature that which is original, the product of what we call genius.””

“In art and literature we require not only an expression of the facts in nature and in human life, but of feeling, thought, emotion. There must be an appeal to the universal in the race.””

“And in proportion as riches and rich men are honored in the state, virtue and the virtuous are dishonored. "And what is honored is cultivated, and that which has no honor is neglected.””

“One cause of the decay of the power of defense in a state, says the Athenian Stranger in Plato's Laws”

“The men who projected and are pushing on this enterprise, with an executive ability that would maintain and manoeuvre an army in a campaign, are not, however, consciously philanthropists, moved by the charitable purpose of giving employment to men, or finding satisfaction in making two blades of grass grow where one grew before. They enjoy no doubt the sense of power in bringing things to pass, the feeling of leadership and the consequence derived from its recognition; but they embark in this enterprise in order that they may have the position and the luxury that increased wealth will bring, the object being, in most cases, simply material advantages”

“Can it be that there is anything of more consequence in life than the great business in hand, which absorbs the vitality and genius of this age? Surely, we say, it is better to go by steam than to go afoot, because we reach our destination sooner”

“Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently!””

“The chopping up of time into rigid periods is an invasion of individual freedom and makes no allowances for differences in temperament and feeling.””

“This is really life, this is doing something in the world, and in the presence of it you can see why the creators of it regard your world, which seemed to you so important, the world whose business is the evolution and expression of thought and emotion, as insignificant.””

“Discontent, then, arises from absurd notions of equality, from natural conditions of inequality, from false notions of education, and from the very patent fact, in this age, that men have been educated into wants much more rapidly than social conditions have been adjusted, or perhaps ever can be adjusted, to satisfy those wants. Beyond all the actual hardship and suffering, there is an immense mental discontent which has to be reckoned with.””