Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success. Louisa May Alcott
You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty. Louisa May Alcott
Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable. Louisa May Alcott
Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes. Louisa May Alcott
Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say No when they mean Yes, and drive a man out of his wits for the fun of it. Louisa May Alcott
A little kingdom I possess, where thoughts and feelings dwell; And very hard the task I find of governing it well. Louisa May Alcott
Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us - and those around us - more effectively. Look for the learning. Louisa May Alcott
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes. Ernest Hemingway
A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl. Ernest Hemingway
Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts. Ernest Hemingway
I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred. Ernest Hemingway
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other. Ernest Hemingway
There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention. Ernest Hemingway
Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture. Ernest Hemingway
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first. Ernest Hemingway