“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.”

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.

The only legitimate artists in England are the architects.

Mistrusts sometimes come over one’s mind of the justice of God. But let a real misery come again, and to whom do we fly? To whom do we instinctively and immediately look up?

Newton’s health, and confusion to mathematics.

One life to live, live it to the fullest. If you have doubts or your gut feeling says something, listen. Don’t waste time, time will waist u.

There is no feeling like coming home after danger.

You exist without the feeling of existence.

I do see a lot of the hard end of ecology, and my feeling is that we live on a super-exciting planet but a super-fragile one.

Unreal. I’m feeling nostalgic for something that happened less than twenty-four hours ago. This has got to be a record.

The truth doesn’t hurt unless it ought to.

The feeling is that Fidel Castro’s much bigger than he actually is.

When we experience our own desire for transformation, we are feeling the universe evolving through us.