“The true art of memory is the art of attention.”

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Grief is a species of idleness.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

The future is purchased by the present.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it…. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don’t think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.

The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.

When any calamity is suffered, the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.

The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of art for art’s sake than a man on a sinking ship thinks of painting a beautiful picture in the cabin; he thinks of getting ashore – and then there will be time enough for art.

Turn your scars into stars.

But I am just a poet who makes art out of broken people.

The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.

Music is a fair and glorious gift of God. I am strongly persuaded that after theology, there is no art which can be placed on the level with music.

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

Art is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit.