Hatred comes from the heart contempt from the head and neither feeling is quite within our control.

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.

Dream Song:As my eyes Search the prairie, I feel the summer in the spring. Whenever I pause The noise Of the village.

I fear that there will be no neat ending to this, in the manner of the old Greek plays. Where the Gods descend, and all is explained, and tidied away.

There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.

Oh God, if there be cricket in heaven, let there also be rain.

Anthony Doerr again takes language beyond mortal limits.

The [guitar is the] instrument most complete and richest in its harmonic and polyphonic possibilities.

May a thread of comfort be woven through your difficult days.

Beware of getting too comfortable! When we are comfortable, it’s easy to forget other people.

Death is a convention, a certification to the end of pain, something for the vital statistics book, not binding upon anyone but the keepers of graveyard records.

You don't have to wear expensive clothes to look good.