“My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.”

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.

Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

The Kingdom of God is Within You.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.

If you love me as you say you do, she whispered, ‘make it so that I am at peace.

Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

Everything intelligent is so boring.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it.

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

You must believe me when I believe, and not when I doubt.

In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me.

It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility.

There is a lot of rubbish written about toilet humour

The child [uses] ‘doubt about food to hide doubt about love.’

Virtue does not truly reward her votary if she leaves him sad and half doubtful whether it would not have been better to serve vice.