“We are not surprised that Abimelech and Ephron seem to reverence him so profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his conscious relation to God.”

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 may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite.

An undevout poet is an impossibility.

I love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

When I’m doing well, it’s like I’m in a nice little ballet. Everything is going slow all around me. It’s very peaceful.

The Journey of Reconciliation was organized not only to devise techniques for eliminating Jim Crow in travel, but also as a training ground for similar peaceful projects against discrimination in such major areas as employment and in the armed services.

At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical.

What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.

You are the best friend you will ever have. In the presence of your true self you will become the most peaceful, the most relaxed, the most natural person possible.

…So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Only through women’s full and equal participation in all areas of public and private life can we hope to achieve the sustainable, peaceful and just society promised in the United Nations Charter.