A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again.

God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.

When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.

Solitude vivifies, isolation kills.

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions.

There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.

Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions.

I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy.

Conscientious men are, almost everywhere, less encouraged than tolerated.

There are people who laugh to show their fine teeth; and there are those who cry to show their good hearts.

If you want to know whether or not you have had a successful life, think about what people would say about you at your own funeral.

Cruel irony, the poor man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.

I don't think my music really provokes that kind of energy that makes people want to grab AKs and rally through the streets. I don't think my music is gangsta in that sense.

In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

Writing, I explained, was mainly an attempt to out-argue one's past; to present events in such a light that battles lost in life were either won on paper or held to a draw.

There's no use in comparing one's feelings between one day and the next; you must allow a reasonable interval, for the direction of change to show itself.

A slice of hot, buttered toast is the perfect meal. It's not too much and not too little, and it gives you just the right buzz.

Sculpture will last a lot longer than painting.

There is nothing impossible with God. All the impossibility is with us when we measure God by the limitations of our unbelief.

And so I'm saying that, yes, colonialism was terrible, and I describe it as a legacy of wars, but we ought to be moving away from that by now.