A word too much always defeats its purpose.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

Heaven mocks the short-sighted views of man.

I've been rejected a hundred times. It just takes that one person who totally believes in you!

The best antidote I have found is to yearn for something. As long as you yearn you can't congeal: there is a forward motion to yearning.

Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good company by the way.

The discovery of natural law is a meeting with God.

Don't cry so bitterly, but remember this day, and resolve with all your soul that you will never know another like it.

No man in the history of baseball had as much power as . No man.

To receive gratitude with grace is a form of gratitude by itself, and not always an easy art to master.

I believe the personal is the collective. One of the ironies of writing memoir is in using the "I" it becomes an alchemical "we." This is the sorcery of literature.

You shouldn't say anything mean about people who can't read. You should write it instead.