“Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”

They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.

Truth is in things, and not in words.

One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.

The most mighty of nature’s laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.

Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.

Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.

Honor lies in the mane of a horse.

The poor man wants many things; the covetous man, all.

There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.

Yet habit – strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

We must bear what Heaven sends.

Would you know my name, if I saw you in Heaven?

Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die to get there!

Heaven and hell is right now. You make it heaven or you make it hell by your actions.

Without looking out of my window I could know the ways of heaven.

I know there will be no more tears in heaven.

I guess the solo from ‘Achilles Last Stand’ is in the same tradition as the solo from ‘Stairway to Heaven’ It is on that level to me.

Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.