John Kendrick Bangs Quotes

Taking the alphabet first and learning one letter a year for twenty-six years he will be able to read and write as early in life as he ought to. If we were more careful not to teach our children to read in their childhood we should not be so anxious about the effects of pernicious literature upon their adolescent morals.

The only care That I shall share Shall be the care of others, And on the road I'll halve the load Of overburdened brothers. I rather guess It's selfishness That drives me to such actions, For in this plan I find I can Forget my own distractions.

A nasty day! A nasty day! 'Twas thus I heard a critic say Because the skies were bleak and gray - And yet it somehow seemed to me The day was all that it should be. I looked it very closely o'er; Its hours still were twenty-four, With sixty minutes each - no less - For deeds of good and helpfulness; And every second full of chance To give the day significance; And every hour full of growth For everybody but the sloth - I couldn't see it quite that way, For though the skies were bleak and gray The day itself, it seemed to me, Was all a day could rightly be.

Misery loves company, particularly when she is herself the hostess, and can give generously of her stores to others.

If I must have an ill, may it be real, That I may meet it eye to eye and fight, And wheresoever it may strength reveal Get after it with all my main and might. The woe that but impends and wears the mind With worry deep and most vexatious care, Is harder fighting than the realler kind, For when you come to strike - it isn't there!

His view of me and my ways were expressed with some degree of force to our family physician who, when at the age of a hundred and fifty-three I came down with the mumps, having summoned the whole family and said that I would burst before morning, was met by a reassuring observation from Adam that he wouldn't believe I was dead even if I had been buried a year. "It is the good who die young, Doctor," he said. "On that principle this young malefactor will live to be the oldest man in the world.

Thought is everything. Pain is something. Hence where there is no thought there can be no pain. Wherefore if you have a pain it is evident that you have a thought. To be rid of the pain stop thinking.

For me, my craft is sailing on,Through mists to-day, clear seas anon.Whate'er the final harbor be'T is good to sail upon the sea!

I like the man who takes the stones Upon his rocky road With smiling lips instead of groans, Whate'er his heavy load Who seizes each as on he goes, And neatly crumbles it, And turns his share of pebbly woes To stores of inner grit.

You know the Model of your Car. You know just what its powers are. You treat it with a deal of care, Nor tax it more than it will bear. But as to self - that's different. Your mechanism may be bent, Your carbureter gone to grass, Your engine just a rusty mass. Your wheels may wobble and your cogs Be handed over to the dogs, And on you skip, and skid, and slide, Without a thought of things inside. What fools indeed we mortals are To lavish care upon a Car, With ne'er a bit of time to see About our own machinery!

I have no dog, but it must be Somewhere there's one belongs to me
A little chap with wagging tail, And dark brown eyes that never quail, But look you through, and through, and through, With love unspeakable and true.

As I [Eve] was the only cook in all Christendom at the time, the idea of not coming home to dinner never occurred to Adam ... It is true that at times he criticised my cooking, but in view of certain ancestral limitations from which he suffered, I never had to sit quietly and listen to an exasperating disquisition on the Pies That Mother Used To Make ...

If there is any animal in the whole category of four-legged creatures that more thoroughly deserves to be called a pig than the pig, I don't know what it is. He looks like a pig, he behaves like a pig, and he eats like a pig - in fact he is a pig, and Adam never did anything better than when he invented that name and applied it.

Whose heart doth hold the Christmas glow Hath little need of Mistletoe; Who bears a smiling grace of mien Need waste no time on wreaths of green; Whose lips have words of comfort spread Needs not the holly-berries red - His very presence scatters wide The spirit of the Christmastide.

Pandemonium did not reign; it poured.

Comes now a smiling New-Born Year To fill to-day with goodly cheer - An infant hale and lusty. Upon our door-sill he is left By Daddy Time, of clothes bereft Despite the season gusty. If he be Churl or doughty Knight, A Son of Darkness or of Light No man can tell, God bless him! But be he base or glorious Time puts it wholly up to us To dress him!

If I had my way no one should be taught to read until after he had passed his hundredth year. In that way, and in that way only can we protect our youth from the dreadful influence of such novels as 'Three Cycles, Not To Mention The Rug,' which dreadful book I have found within the past month in the hands of at least twenty children in the neighborhood, not one of whom was past sixty.

Curious," it said. "What you call your decent self doesn't dare look me in the eye! What a mistake people make who say that the man who won't look you in the eye is not to be trusted! As if mere brazenness were a sign of honesty; really, the theory of decency is the most amusing thing in the world.