A woman in a single state may be happy and may be miserable; but most happy, most miserable, these are epithets belonging to a wife.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection.

Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.

A great mind must be androgynous.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

That gracious thing, made up of tears and light.

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.

Religion is the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It alone will gentilize, if unmixed with cant.

Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face.

You have what you need to be happy.

Just because you will not see the work completed does not mean you are free not to take it up.

Need from destiny change with time.

My mother always cultivated my imagination from the time I was very little.

The time I save setting up and cleaning up probably balances out by the time I spend on output.

Affection is like bread, unnoticed till we starve, and then we dream of it, and sing of it, and paint it, when every urchin in the street has more than he can eat.

I don't regret any decisions I've made in my life.

Every path to a new understanding begins in confusion.

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.

The catastrophist constructs theories, the uniformitarian demolishes them.