“I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.”

Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream.

There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.

We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!

Generosity is the flower of justice.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

Happiness is like a butterfly.

There is something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.

What we call real estate – the solid ground to build a house on – is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

What is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

First appearance deceives many.

A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.

If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?

If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.

I grew up dying my hair with Kool-Aid. I used to switch my hair up every day just to make myself look and feel good.

Beer: Helping ugly people have sex since 3000 B. C.

Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill.

Defeat appears to me preferable to total inaction.