“That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men.”

liberty, to define it, is nothing other than the absence of impediments to motion

For prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

God put me on this Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I’m so far behind that I’ll never die

Where shall I turn, what shall I do?’ are the voices of people grieving. Idleness is torture. In all times and places, nature abhors a vacuum.

It is in the laws of a commonwealth, as in the laws of gaming: Whatsoever the gamesters all agree on, is an injustice to none of them.

A man’s conscience and his judgment are the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous”

The Value, or Worth of a man, is as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power.

The Conscience is a thousand witnesses.

Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men.

whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin.

Life itself is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense.

Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting but in a tract of time,wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.

Knowledge is power.

Desire, to know why, and how, curiosity; such as is in no living creature but man

If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.

People say to me so often, ‘Jane how can you be so peaceful when everywhere around you people want books signed, people are asking these questions and yet you seem peaceful,’ and I always answer that it is the peace of the forest that I carry inside.

Books are a narcotic.

The misconception is that standup comics are always on. I don’t know any really funny comics that are annoying and constantly trying to be funny all the time.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life, it’s The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that’s not enough anymore.

All of my books deal in a very rough, rude fashion with subjects about which there are great conflicts of opinion.