“Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.”

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.

If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another.

The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.

Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb.

A man’s bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.

The calmer thought is not always the right thought, just as the distant view is not always the truest view.

We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.

A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

Moonlight is sculpture.

I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.

There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-’60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn’t the night before.

An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.

Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.

There’s this idea that because I’m a heavyweight, I’m not supposed to be in condition, that I should take advantage of the fact that I can eat. But I train and eat well, and it shows when I step on the scales.

The liberty of thinking and publishing whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrances, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountainhead and origin of many evils.

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

The world is so full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage. He has little competition.

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.