“A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books.”

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more.

Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.

There is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.

A man in the right, with God on his side, is in the majority, though he be alone, for God is multitudinous above all populations of the earth.

The human soul is God’s treasury, out of which he coins unspeakable riches.

Sorrow makes men sincere.

There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. Life is one prolonged birth.

Home should be the center of joy, equatorial and tropical.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.”

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note – torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.

Debt rolls a man over and over, binding him hand and foot, and letting him hang upon the fatal mesh until the long-legged interest devours him.

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.

In the early ages men ruled by strength; now they rule by brain, and so long as there is only one man in the world who can think and plan, he will stand head and shoulders above him who cannot.

The best lessons a man ever learns are from his mistakes. It is not for want of schoolmasters that we are still ignorant.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

It does not say in the Bible that all laws of nature are expressible linearly!

I haven’t read any of the autobiographies about me.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

I remember when I first started being in magazines, I had pretty thin skin. I was this nerd that read books and stayed home and didn’t go out.

I either write the book or sell the jewels. And I’m kinda sentimental about the jewels.

Those books of mine that are remunerative – I’m not talking about poetry here – take years to write, and I am never sure they’ll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.

I never thought my book would turn so many people against slavery.

People aren’t quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They’re not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different.