A religion without mystery must be a religion without God.

Love is friendship set on fire.

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.

God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends.

Revenge... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.

All virtuous women, like tortoises, carry their house on their heads, and their chappel in their heart, and their danger in their eye, and their souls in their hands, and God in all their actions.

It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent.

A celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity.

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not.

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.

God is pleased with no music below so much as with the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows and supported orphans; of rejoicing, comforted, and thankful persons.

The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.

Living in New York, you get a lot of confidence; when I go back to Michigan, I realise how obnoxious and demanding and straightforward I am.

It draws it's strength, this big secret, from the same root from which I draw my strength, both the good and the bad, because in the end, they cannot be separated.

My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.

The art of teaching is tolerance. Humbleness is the art of learning.

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

I think I was probably always a liar; I just get paid for it now.

I decided to go to Latin America because many of my students in Washington emigrated from this region and inspired me to learn more about their home countries.

The two great aims of industrialism — replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy — seem close to fulfillment.