“Poverty is only contemptible when it is felt to be so. Doubtless the best way to make our poverty respectable is to seem never to feel it as an evil.”

Excellence in art is largely the result of attention to minutiae, and–prayer.

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.

We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we muse upon it.

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.

A mother is the best friend God ever gave.

It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

It is our relation to circumstances that determines their influence upon us.

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.

It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.

It is with a company as it is with a punch, everything depends upon the ingredients of which it in composed.

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great.

There are some kinds of men who cannot pass their time alone; they are the flails of occupied people.There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.

Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.

There is no doubt that this government and this country are benefiting from the reforms that we brought in the 1980s, and that couldn’t have been done without the co-operation of the trade union movement.

Doctor, you don’t know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don’t; you couldn’t with eyebrows like yours.

Extremism is not endemic in my region, nor is anti-Western sentiment. No doubt there is discontent and distrust. That is towards more the American and some Western policies, and not toward the American people.

To doubt is to have faith in the worst possible outcome.

I don’t prepare for my roles. I don’t watch movies to get inspired. I don’t dig deep. I’ll never be that type of actor, and I doubt that I ever will be.

{While meditating} I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind; I don’t question or doubt whether I am in the “correct” state or not.

I’ve got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts.

I studied that first Karpov-Kasparov match for a year and a half before I cracked it, what they were doing, and discovered that it was all prearranged move-by-move. There’s no doubt of it in my mind.