Habits are the daughters of action, but then they nurse their mother, and produce daughters after her image, but far more beautiful and prosperous.

Love is friendship set on fire.

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.

God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends.

Revenge... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.

All virtuous women, like tortoises, carry their house on their heads, and their chappel in their heart, and their danger in their eye, and their souls in their hands, and God in all their actions.

It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent.

A celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity.

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not.

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.

God is pleased with no music below so much as with the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows and supported orphans; of rejoicing, comforted, and thankful persons.

I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman? (wonders Lady Catelyn Stark)

You can never enslave somebody who knows who he is.

It is given to us to live for the most part under the guidance of mathematics ... It is impossible to distinguish from other living creatures anyone who does not understand how to quantify.

We all know what tragedy is. "Yes, I'd rather not have any more tragedy, please. I'll have comedy, please." Comedy, in the Greek sense, only means that it has a happy ending.

To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.

I place flowers in the very first rank of simple pleasures; and I have no very good opinion of the hard worldly people who take no delight in them.

I was often in the pit lane, the noise was indescribable and I've no doubt that is why my hearing was affected.

...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.

If I decide to be indecisive, that's my decision.