“There are two things that kill a genius – a fatal disease and contentment.”

I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man — public opinion.

The purpose of life is to live it.

Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either.

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.

It is just as often a great misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.

Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document?

If a man is happy in America, it is considered he is doing something wrong.

We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.

The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery.

Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions.

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.

An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.

Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.

None meet life honestly and few heroically.

There are only moments of happiness – from contentment to ecstacy.

If i could spin around your axis just one last time, That sunrise and sunset would be enough of a forever to satisfy me.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

There is no paycheck that can equal the feeling of contentment that comes from being the person you are meant to be.

For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.