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

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions – the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

We are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference.

Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.

In the deepest night of trouble and sorrow God gives us so much to be thankful for that we need never cease our singing.

There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon.

This world has angels all too few, and heaven is overflowing.

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity.

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self?

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

Our own heart, and not other men’s opinion, forms our true honor.

Clergymen who publish pious frauds in the interest of the church are the orthodox liars of God.

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

I always find it incredibly difficult to figure out whether I should reach for the check or not. I don’t want to presume anything, but I don’t want to be a ball-buster.

In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.

I can not understand why ministers presume to deliver sermons every week at appointed hours because it is humanly impossible for inspirations to come with clock-like regularity

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.

In athletics, the idea of possibility is presumed. It’s not ‘if;’ it’s ‘how.’

People presume my disability has to do with being an amputee, but that’s not the case.

Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. … under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.