I play better tennis because the court is there.

By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

Nature is cruel; it's man whose is sick of blood -- and man doesn't seem so very sick of it.

The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye.

When I see birches bend to left and right... I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.
How often already you've had to be told,
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.
Dread fifty above more than fifty below.
I have to be gone for a season or so.

'Warm in December, cold in June, you say?'

I don't suppose the water's changed at all.

You and I know enough to know it's warm

Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm.

But all the fun's in how you say a thing.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

To Time it never seems that he is brave

To set himself against the peaks of snow

To lay them level with the running wave,

Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,

But only grave, contemplative and grave.

We love things we love what they are.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

No, in country money, the country scale of gain, The requisite lift of spirit has never been found.

A definite purpose, like blinders on a horse, inevitably narrows its possessor's point of view.

People are inexterminable -- like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices -- that's us.

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.

Families break up when people take hints you don't intend and miss hints you do intend.

Our lives laid down in war and peace may not
Be found acceptable in Heaven's sight.
And that they may be is the only prayer
Worth praying. May my sacrifice
Be found acceptable in Heaven's sight.

The sidelong glance is what you depend on.