“It is a gentle and affectionate thought, that in immeasurable height above us, at our first birth, the wreath of love was woven with sparkling stars for flowers.”

Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

A great mind must be androgynous.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Silence does not always mark wisdom.

Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.

There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy which must sadden, or at least soften every reflecting observer.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

I never knew a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other.

A bitter and perplexed “What shall I do?” Is worse to man than worse necessity.

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.

Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills.

How did the atheist get his idea of that God whom he denies?

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,–just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all.

Oh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them!

Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.

We can rise above our limitations, only once we recognize them.

In a fleshly tomb, I am buried above ground.

So he’s above the law because he’s a celebrity or something. Just because you’re Russell Crowe doesn’t mean you can do whatever you like.

Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.

Everything above and below is one unity.

Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment.

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Over and above communication and vigilance, there are two factors I have always mentioned. They are sleep, and a sense of history.