“Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.”

It is hard to believe long together that anything is “worth while,” unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I love not to be choked with other men’s thoughts.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

It is never too late to become the person you always thought you could be.

Of new acquaintances one can never be sure because one likes them one day that it will be so the next. Of old friends one is sure that it will be the same yesterday, today, and forever.

One can say everything best over a meal.

We’re playing our instruments probably more so than most people that I see play their instruments.

So efficient are the available instruments of slavery; fingerprints, lie detectors, brain washings, gas chambers; that we shiver at the thought of political change which might put these instruments in the hands of men of hate.

The audience is like my instrument. It’s not just me up there, it’s collaborative.

Attack your instruments. Don’t let them attack you.

You can be enticed by food, wooed by food, sex, money, or instruments.

I see man more as an instrument or an agent more than anything else.