Avoid all affectation and singularity. What is according to nature is best, and what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own.

People's opinions of themselves are legible in their countenances.

As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room

Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.

Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind, that enables us to do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.

Passing too eagerly upon a provocation loses the guard and lays open the body; calmness and leisure and deliberation do the business much better.

Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good eating and ill-living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property.

A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading.

Patient waiting is often the highest way of doing God's will.

Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.

Envy, like a cold prison, benumbs and stupefies; and, conscious of its own impotence, folds its arms in despair.

If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us.

A liberal education... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation.

In a sense, 'American Pie' was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful.

Wage work is disappearing. I didn't make the jobs disappear, but they have disappeared. And people are forced to be looking for other alternatives.

The Church is a perpetually defeated thing that always outlives her conquerers.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.

I sort of enjoy being able to hear what other composers are doing and how they might score something differently than me. I enjoy that part.

I think probably Australians have just a little more taste than most people.

Only white men have the luxury of ignoring race.

It seemed to me as if the stones sang, in the strangest voices, in the language of Ultima Thule.