I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

Some suggestions for you :

The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass.

A woman's intuition is better than a man's. Nobody knows anything, really, you know, and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man.

If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.

If we never lied , there would be nothing to remember.

She warn't particular; she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her tribute before he was cold. She called them tributes.

When I am come to mine own again, I will always honor little children, remembering how that these trusted me and believed me in my time of trouble; whilst they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held me for a liar.

She makes me wash, they make me comb all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed... the widder [widow] eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she wakes up by a bell-everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it.

We all know about Father Damien, the French priest who voluntarily forsook the world and went to the leper island of Molokai to labor among its population of sorrowful exiles who wait there, in slow-consuming misery, for death to come and release them from their troubles.

Experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.

Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

Get the facts first. You can distort them later.

There is no easy or quick plan to happiness, there is no single spot where you can start. Where you are right now is the best place to begin.

When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn’t say it.