“People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first. Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.”

It is one mark of a superior mind to understand and be influenced by the superiority of others.

It is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.

If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow.

If I am to write, I must have a room to myself, which shall be my room.

Your little child is the only true democrat.

True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love’s sake have in them a poetry that is immortal.

The world has been busy for some centuries in shutting and locking every door through which a woman could step into wealth, except the door of marriage.

In the gates of eternity the black hand and the white hand hold each other with equal clasp.

I make no manner of doubt that you threw a very diamond of truth at me, though you see it hit me so directly in the face that it wasn’t exactly appreciated, at first.

The heart has no tears to give,–it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.

Treat ’em like dogs, and you’ll have dogs’ works and dogs’ actions. Treat ’em like men, and you’ll have men’s works.

My vocation to preach on paper.

By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?

It’s a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.

Sweet souls around us watch us still, press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, with gentle helpings glide.

Learning to let them be is self care.

Occupy yourself in beholding and bewailing your own imperfections rather than contemplating the imperfections of others.

You’re too powerful to be a slave of acceptance.

There’s no alternative to being yourself. Accept it, honour it, value it – and get on with it.

Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.

Once you accept that playing the game will be uncomfortable, and you do it for a while, it will become much easier (like it does when getting fit). When you excel at it, you will find your ability to get what you want thrilling.

Yet this is the watch by night. Let us all accept new strength, and real tenderness. And at dawn, armed with glowing patience, we will enter the cities of glory.

Never accept or be too comfortable with the status quo, because the companies that get into trouble are historically the ones that aren’t able to adapt to change and respond quickly enough.