There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency - and a virtue, and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency - and a vice.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious.
As a boy, I once saw a cart of melons that sorely tempted me. I sneaked up to the cart and stole a melon. I went into the alley to devour it, but no sooner had I set my teeth into it, than I paused, a strange feeling coming over me. I came to a quick conclusion. Firmly, I walked up to that cart, replaced the melon - and took a ripe one.
I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument an an unsuspected yearning to play on it, which are bound to wake up an demand attention someday. Therefore you who rail at such that disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a guitar, beware! For sooner or later your own time will come.
Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
It was on the 10th day of May - 1884 - that I confessed to age by mounting spectacles for the first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth, to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. The spectacles stayed on.
I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.