“It is some compensation for great evils, that they enforce great lessons.”

Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.

Give me the character and I will forecast the event.

To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.

If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.

Dignity of position adds to dignity of character, as well as to dignity of carriage. Give us a proud position, and we are impelled to act up to it.

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.

Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders.

We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.

Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.

Nothing is so fragile as thought in its infancy; an interruption breaks it: nothing is so powerful, even to overturning empires, when it reaches its maturity.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.

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.

The next time you are encouraged to fall into line, to be a sport and everything in you says no – be courageous and go your own way. There is no compensation in conformity.

History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

Beer is a gift from the goddesses, a soothing balm given our species to bring joy and comfort in compensation for the curse of self-awareness.

We won’t know them by their name but their compensation will be to affect the outcome of the planet.

With thorns in the inner world there will always be roses in the outer world, in law-able compensation.

A contract is an ask game, and if it asks for an hour, and I submit to an hour, then it’s an hour. When I look at a contract, I look at the obligation – where, when, how long, the compensation. If I agree to it, that’s the way it is. I have an obligation. They have an obligation.

We regard intelligence as man’s main characteristic and we know that there is no superiority which intelligence cannot confer on us, no inferiority for which it cannot compensate.

A lot of people say I seem masculine, but I don’t feel it. I feel intrinsically feminine. I’d love to be one of the boys but I always felt a bit on the outside. Maybe my masculine qualities come from overcompensating because I’m not one of the boys.