“Music is well said to be the speech of angels.”

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

The first duty of man is that of subduing fear.

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

There can be no acting or doing of any kind till it be recognized that there is a thing to be done; the thing once recognized, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible.

One monster there is in the world, the idle man.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!

A man lives by believing something.

Naps are a way of traveling painlessly through time into the future.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don’t happen at all.

You have actually waltzed with tremendous style, my sweet, O my sweet, crushed angel.

Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, /May be refin’d and join th’ angelic train.

May be refined, and join the angelic train.

He was the keynote speaker for our better angels.

I was a shy ugly kid who led a big fantasy life. I thought I was an angel sent from heaven, to cure polio. When Dr. Salk did that I was really pissed off.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

If you’re not okay, you might as well not pretend you are, especially since life has a way of holding us down until we utter that magic word: help! That’s when angels rush to your side.

I am imperfect in many things, nevertheless I want my brethren and kinsfolk to know my nature so that they may be able to perceive my soul’s desire.