“The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.”

A mother is the best friend God ever gave.

It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

It is our relation to circumstances that determines their influence upon us.

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.

It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.

It is with a company as it is with a punch, everything depends upon the ingredients of which it in composed.

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great.

There are some kinds of men who cannot pass their time alone; they are the flails of occupied people.There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.

Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.

Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.

To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world–without friends or country, home or kindred.

Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.

The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it–to realize it to the full–to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.

Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it.

Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.

When composing a verse let there not be a hair’s breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

In America, I don’t know how much longer the environment is going to exist. I sort of strongly believe that we’re in danger.

I think it’s really important to have a life and have interests outside of this [movie] business, and not rely on this business to validate you as a human being. If you do that, you’re really in a dangerous spot.

As many know, the Chinese expression for “crisis” consists of two characters side by side. The first is the symbol for “danger,” the second the symbol for “opportunity.”

Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.

Danger will wink on opportunity.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing – it only hastens fools to rush in where angels fear to tread.