“What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.”

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.

There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.

Newton, (that Proverb of the Mind,) alas! Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent, That he himself felt only “like a youth Picking up shells by the great Ocean-Truth.”

I have not loved the world, nor the world me.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

I awoke one day to find myself famous.

O thou beautiful And unimaginable ether! and Ye multiplying masses of increased And still increasing lights! what are ye? what Is this blue wilderness of interminable Air, where ye roll along, as I have seen

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

I have imbibed such a love for money that I keep some sequins in a drawer to count, and cry over them once a week.

Tis the perception of the beautiful, A fine extension of the faculties, Platonic, universal, wonderful, Drawn from the stars, and filtered through the skies, Without which life would be extremely dull

A pretty woman is a welcome guest.

Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen.

I stood among them, but not of them: in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.

If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself…that a tiger is an optical illusion–well, he will find out he is wrong.

It is but another of the proofs which are heaping up in American industry to-day that whatever is good for men and women – contributes to their health, happiness, development – is good for business.

I had a lot of friends in high school, but I was never the wild party girl. Never have been, never plan to be!

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.

There is nothing more tragic than to come to the end of life and know we have been on the wrong course.

I have clearly recorded this: for one can learn good lessons also from what has been tried but clearly has not succeeded, when it is clear why it has not succeeded.

The quest of the truth had been born in me – the most tragic and incomplete, as well as the most essential, of man’s quests.

I’ve been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.