“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.”

Who is wise in love, love most, say least.

This barren verbiage, current among men, Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.

Ah, Christ, that it were possible, For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.

God gives us love! Something to love He lends us; but when love is grown To ripeness, that on which it throve Falls off, and love is left alone: This is the curse of time.

Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths; Love laps his wings on either side the heart Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts, So that they pass not to the shrine of sound.

It’s better to have tried and failed than to live life wondering what would’ve happened if I had tried.

Four grey walls, and four grey towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.

Blind and naked ignorance delivers brawling judgments, unashamed, on all things all day long

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.

All things human change.

A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.

Silence, beautiful voice.

Nothing in Nature is unbeautiful.

More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hours will last.

Without you, dearest dearest I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think – or live – I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night.

I think people have gotten to know Tupac much better since he’s been gone than they did when he was here.

Without Coretta Scott King, there would not have been a Martin Luther King, Jr. in the way that we know him.

The percept is the landscape before man, in the absence of man.

To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.

The absence of him is everywhere I look.

I know that the absence of my father in my life had its cost.

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.