By paying our other debts, we are equal with all mankind; but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

Every time you see the Wal-Mart smiley face, whistling and knocking down the prices, somewhere there's a factory worker being kicked in the stomach. - Sherrie Ford

The public school has become the established church of secular society.

Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?

I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.

A contra dance is like an amusement park ride we make for ourselves.

Each musical finds its own way.

Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.

I don't consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted.

Elections are about choosing sides, but inaugurations are about closing ranks.

...thinking as he had thought before and would think again and as every other man has thought: how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.