George William Curtis

“Happiness lies first of all in health.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“The test of civilization is its estimate of women.”

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

“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 h---y. It doesn't mean you like women any more at twenty-one than you did at ten.”