“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

Moonlight is sculpture.

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

There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover 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.

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.

Sex is too easy for women to get, and too hard for men. I mean, honestly, for a man to walk into someplace and have every woman ready to take him home, he’d have to rule the world. A woman would have to do her hair.

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.

Putting on weight is easy all the way through. But after the first couple of weeks, the novelty wears off very quickly, and your body is groaning and starting to really shout at you, saying, ‘Why? Why? Why? Why are you doing this?’

The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.

One miracle is just as easy to believe as another.

It’s not always easy to identify your own voice. It comes with time.

A presidential campaign may easily degenerate into a mere personal contest, and so lose its real dignity. There is no indispensable man.