“To rankling poison hast thou turned in me the milk of human kindness.”

We can never replace a friend. When a man is fortunate enough to have several, he finds they are all different. No one has a double in friendship.

Against stupidity, God Himself fights in vain.

There is room in the smallest cottage for a happy loving pair.

Honesty prospers in every condition of life.

If you have never seen beauty in a moment of suffering, you have never seen beauty at all. If you have never seen joy in a beautiful face, you have never seen joy at all.

Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful.

The happy man does not notice the flight of time.

The Moor has done his work, the Moor may go.

Strange customs do not thrive in foreign soil.

It may here be justly said, that genuine morality is preserved only in the school of adversity, and a state of continuous prosperity may easily prove a quicksand to virtue.

Freedom exists only with power.

Vast, colossal destiny, which raises man to fame, though it may also grind him to powder!

The dictates of the heart are the voice of fate.

Wise to resolve, patient to perform.

The will of man is his happiness.

The great happiness of life, I find, after all, to consist in the regular discharge of some mechanical duty.

We can master change not though force or fear, but only though the free work of an understanding mind, though an openness to new knowledge and fresh outlooks, which can only strengthen the most fragile and most powerful of human gifts: the gift of reason.

I always compare marriage to communism. They’re both institutions that don’t conform to human nature, so you’re going to end up with lying and hypocrisy.

Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.

If conservatives get to call universal healthcare ‘socialized medicine,’ I get to call private, for-profit healthcare ‘soulless, vampire bastards making money off human pain.’

Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.

But separate a man from his car – that’s inhuman.

Nelson Mandela, a better man, not a bitter man, made our world a better place in which to live. His life and leadership exemplify the highest courage, dignity, and dedication to human liberation.

It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.