“Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries.”

We loved with a love that was more than love.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness – imperfection – and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many Colored Grass.

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.

Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.

Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.

I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.

Yet mad I am not and very surely do I not dream.

Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.

There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.”

Scripture is like a pair of spectacles which dispels the darkness and gives us a clear view of God.

When the Bible speaks, God speaks.

Only those who have learned well to be earnestly dissatisfied with themselves, and to be confounded with shame at their wretchedness truly understand the Christian gospel.

The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means of doing both.

We need to hear the Gospel every day, because we forget it every day.

I read one psychologist’s theory that said, “Never strike a child in your anger.” When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he’s recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on Sunday?

The blindness of unbelievers in no way detracts from the clarity of the gospel; the sun is no less bright because blind men do not perceive its light.

The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.