“These gems have life in them: their colors speak, say what words fail of.”

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

The best travel is that which one can take by one’s own fireside. In memory or imagination.

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past-sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

I don’t want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

Consequences are unpitying.

I flutter all ways, and fly in none.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

No man can be wise on an empty stomach.

Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.

Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

Trouble’s made us kin.

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

No one can say Christianity has failed. It has never been tried.

I’m not gonna fall. I’m tired of falling. I’m tired of seeing our people fall. I don’t believe in failure.

People who fail, excel at avoiding opportunity.

Sure it does. But if you don’t have the balls to give it a shot, you’re destined to fail.

Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails.

If, however, we look at people from the standpoint of their faults, then being a friend to them is a formidable task.hus is it incumbent upon us, when we direct our gaze toward other people, to see where they excel, not where they fail.

I will never slide, never fall, never fail.

When all else fails, complicate matters