“In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.”

Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills.

How did the atheist get his idea of that God whom he denies?

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,–just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all.

Oh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them!

Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.

We may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite.

An undevout poet is an impossibility.

I love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

We are not surprised that Abimelech and Ephron seem to reverence him so profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his conscious relation to God.

It [is] very unfair to influence a child’s mind by inculcating any opinions before it [has] come to years of discretion to choose for itself.

When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad.

He prayeth best who loveth best.

It is a gentle and affectionate thought, that in immeasurable height above us, at our first birth, the wreath of love was woven with sparkling stars for flowers.

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

I`m very cautious about what appears to be things put in place that will begin to roll back some of the progress that I believe we`ve made.

I was just thrilled to get the gig to begin with. Ten years later to still have it is not only thrilling but also somewhat of a puzzlement.

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with.

Let me begin by saying not only you can’t have democracy with $75 million. You can’t even have it with $750 billion.

I was president then. I’m not president now. When I said it, this would be a sign of goodwill to begin the talks.

When you begin to become conscious, more aware, when your eyes begin to open, the first thing you see is how deluded you are and how much you’re holding onto that which makes you suffer. This is, in many ways, the most important step: Are you willing to be aware?

Once the pursuit of truth begins to haunt the mind, it becomes an ideal never wholly attained.

The will to change begins in the body, not in the mind.