Exercise is the worst thing in the world and as bad an invention as gunpowder.

I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.

The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.

Who has begun has half done. Have the courage to be wise. Begin!

Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.

When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.

Most smiles are started by another smile.

People sometimes fail to live because they are always preparing to live.

Birth is a bittersweet event ... a place where heaven and earth collide in a perplexing clash of hopes, dreams, facts, fears, questions, and expectations.

You have to develop a style that suits you and pursue it, not just develop a bag of tricks.

A god that does not manifest in reality is indistinguishable from a god that does not exist.

You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.

A blot in thy escutcheon to all futurity.

I hold strongly to this: that it is better to be impetuous than circumspect; because fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and coerce her.

It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.

I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as an animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?