“Most people know nothing about learning; many despise it. Dummies reject as too hard whatever is not dumb.”

It’s wrong to deprive someone else of a pleasure so that you can enjoy one yourself, but to deprive yourself of a pleasure so that you can add to someone else’s enjoyment is an act of humanity by which you always gain more than you lose.

Who does more earnestly long for a change than he who is uneasy in his present circumstances? And who run to create confusions with so desperate a boldness as those who have nothing to lose, hope to gain by them?

Lawyers-a profession it is to disguise matters.

For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.

The increasing influence of the Bible is marvelously great, penetrating everywhere. It carries with it a tremendous power of freedom and justice guided by a combined force of wisdom and goodness.

And peradventure we have more cause to thank Him for our loss than for our winning; for His wisdom better seeth what is good for us than we do ourselves.

Two evils, greed and faction are the destruction of all justice.

The things we pray for, good Lord, give us grace to labor for.

As for rosemary, I let it run all over my garden walls, not only because my bees love it but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance and to friendship, whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language.

The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.

Getting married is like putting one’s hand in a bag containing 99 serpents and one eel.

No living creature is naturally greedy, except from fear of want – or in the case of human beings, from vanity, the notion that you’re better than people if you can display more superfluous property than they can.

Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody’s under the frightful necessity of becoming, first a thief, and then a corpse.

To gold and silver nature hath given no use that we may not well lack.

Take something from yourself, to give to another, that is humane and gentle and never takes away as much comfort as it brings again.

It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.

God has allowed hard things in your life so you can show the world that your God is great and that knowing Him brings peace and joy, even when life is hard.

Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.

Really see me. Then I remember who I am, and that no one wants to see the parts of me I try so hard to hide. It’s a plain fact, not something I pity.

Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat.

The more hard lessons you can learn vicariously rather than through your own hard experience, the better.

When I love, I love hard. It almost killed me the first time.

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering.

Maybe I’ve dragged myself through the mud since then, but even mud hardens beneath your shoes. I must be standing on a mountain of it by now. And no one can touch me from way the hell up here.