“Newton’s health, and confusion to mathematics.”

Invention is totally independent of the will.

One of the surest evidences of an elevated taste is the power of enjoying works of impassioned terrorism, in poetry, and painting. The man who can look at impassioned subjects of terror with a feeling of exultation may be certain he has an elevated taste.

When a man is no longer anxious to do better than well, he is done for.

Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.

It is better to make friends than adversaries of a conquered race.

There must be more malice than love in the hearts of all wits.

The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself.

If men would only take the chances of doing right because it is right, instead of the immediate certainty of the advantage of doing wrong, how much happier would their lives be.

Men of genius are often considered superstitious, but the fact is, the fineness of their nerve renders them more alive to the supernatural than ordinary men.

It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also his infinite justice.

All government is an evil, but, of the two form’s of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.

The greatest geniuses have always attributed everything to God, as if conscious of being possessed of a spark of His divinity.

No man, perhaps, is so wicked as to commit evil for its own sake. Evil is generally committed under the hope of some advantage the pursuit of virtue seldom obtains. Yet the most successful result of the most virtuous heroism is never without its alloy.

We are a compound of both here and hereafter; we shall be made responsible for the actions of both while here. Anything beyond this is beyond our power to prove, and would be of no real value if we could.

Satan is to be punished eternally in the end, but for a while he triumphs.

Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent.

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand.

When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually “become” a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.

Awareness of your weakness and confusion makes you strong because conscious awareness is the bright light that destroys the darkness of negativity. Detection of inner negativity is not a negative act, but a courageously positive act that makes you a new person.

Masturbation is a meditation on self-love. So many of us are afflicted with self-loathing, bad body images, shame about our body functions, and confusion about sex and pleasure, I recommend an intense love affair with yourself

Don’t accept the habitual as a natural thing. In times of disorder, of organized confusion, of de-humanized humanity, nothing should seem natural. Nothing should seem impossible to change.

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.

I like that confusion when people are speaking in the same language but still can’t understand each other. It’s also usually my experience of being in America – when I speak no one can understand what I’m saying.