“A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.”

See deep enough, and you see musically.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Without kindness there can be no true joy.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

The first duty of man is that of subduing fear.

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

There can be no acting or doing of any kind till it be recognized that there is a thing to be done; the thing once recognized, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible.

One monster there is in the world, the idle man.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!

Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Writers should provoke disagreement.

If my mouth can move this quickly in an argument imagine what it could do on you.

What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?

Many argue; not many converse.

You load your words as I bare my chest, and this will be the most beautiful death.

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.