“When the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?”

Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.

Failure is the test of greatness.

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.

Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.

Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.

All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do–remember that–and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

My body is but the lees of my better being.

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.

Meditation and water are wedded for ever.

The eyes are the gateway to the soul.

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter’s ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

Do not desire crosses, unless you have borne those already laid upon you well — it is an abuse to long after martyrdom while unable to bear an insult patiently.

Basically, I started singing when I started talking. Music has just been my saving grace my whole life.

A genius is not born, but is educated and trained.

Happy the heart where love has come to birth.

Truth is the only healthy place from which to speak. Assumption is the birthplace of godless chatter.

I lost and found myself in all your maybe’s.

It could have been worse. I could have been born black.

When you believe in your dream and your vision, then it begins to attract its own resources. No one was born to be a failure.