“Newton, (that Proverb of the Mind,) alas! Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent, That he himself felt only “like a youth Picking up shells by the great Ocean-Truth.””

I do not believe in any religion, I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this life without speculating upon another.

Let joy be unconfined.

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.

I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty.

They used to say that knowledge is power. I used to think so, but I know now they mean money.

Since Eve ate the apple, much depends on dinner.

To have joy, one must share it.

I am not now That which I have been.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable.

One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer.

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.

What’s drinking? A mere pause from thinking!

The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden? Is your course measur’d for ye? Or do ye Sweep on in your unbounded revelry Through an aerial universe of endless Expansion,–at which my soul aches to think,– Intoxicated with eternity.

All tragedies are finished by a death, All comedies are ended by a marriage.

Hearts will break – yet brokenly, live on.

The reflexive mechanism of the mind -or whatever it is that allows us to be self-conscious – is cut off or permanently suspended so the mind is ever after held in a fixed now moment out of which it cannot move in its uninterrupted gaze upon the Unknown

Do I believe in ghosts? Of course I do. So do you. Deep in the souls of the most sophisticated of us is lurking a fear of the supernatural which all the discoveries of scientists cannot eradicate.

To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.

Discovery is new beginning. It is the origin of new rules that supplement, or even supplant, the old.

It was a huge deal, a huge musical discovery that became life lessons learned. You can’t return from having an experience like that. The Blind Boys are truly the deepest well of American musical heritage you can discover.

The basis of the discovery is imagination, careful reasoning and experimentation where the use of knowledge created by those who came before is an important component.

Every time a significant discovery is being made one sets in motion a tremendous activity in laboratories and industrial enterprises throughout the world.

Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do.