“A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there’s no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it’s an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.”

Writing has… been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.

Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.

It’s a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.

The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.

Oh courage, oh yes! If only one had that. Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.

The sea possesses a power over one’s moods that has the effect of a will. The sea can hypnotize. Nature in general can do so.

If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.

It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life

Don’t use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.

You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.

The strongest men are the most alone.

Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.

But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.

The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.

Modern intelligence won’t accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.

As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to ‘do what the people want,’ instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.

Every vocation becomes more agreeable when united with devotion.

Loyalty in relationships doesn’t mean you have to blindly agree or be silent.

I like to think, hopefully, people agree that I’m fashionable.

Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you, remember Christ crucified and be silent.

We admit as many genera as there are different groups of natural species of which the fructification has the same structure.

I agree that faith is essential to success in life, but I do not accept your definition of faith, i.e. belief in life after death.