“If I could always read, I should never feel the want of company.”

If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself…that a tiger is an optical illusion–well, he will find out he is wrong.

Absence – that common cure of love.

Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were.

And I would hear yet once before I perish The voice which was my music… Speak to me!

There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

Adversity is the first path to truth.

The great object of life is Sensation – to feel that we exist – even though in pain – it is this “craving void” which drives us to gaming – to battle – to travel – to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.

The drying up a single tear has more, of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.

For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

Come what may, I have been blest.

What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.

Divided we are weak; united, Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world.

Socrates said, our only knowledge was “To know that nothing could be known;” a pleasant Science enough, which levels to an ass Each Man of Wisdom, future, past, or present.

I could get you to smile like that, and without sales tax.

I once tried standing up on my toes to see far out in the distance, but I found that I could see much farther by climbing to a high place.

Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it.

It is never too late to become the person you always thought you could be.

At the age of eight, I discovered that I could write songs.

I know that if I could really understand mental illness, then it would be appropriate to make a big career shift.