He whom God chooseth, out of doubt doth well: What they that choose their God do, who can tell?

Good-humor is allied to generosity, ill-humor to meanness.

Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness.

Despair gives the shocking ease to the mind that a mortification gives to the body.

Discernment is a power of the understanding in which few excel. Is not that owing to its connection with impartiality and truth? for are not prejudice and partiality blind?

To divest one's self of some prejudices would be like taking off the skin to feel the better.

Avarice starves its possessor to fatten those who come after, and who are eagerly awaiting the demise of the accumulator.

Envy is but the smoke of low estate, Ascending still against the fortunate.

Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation than from those they find in ours.

What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more.

A lively and agreeable man has not only the merit of liveliness and agreeableness himself, but that also of awakening them in others.

I didn't want to be the crippled songwriter or the crippled singer. I wanted to be the singer or the songwriter who was crippled. I wanted to be larger than life and a man among men.

I'm a writer. I never expected to be recognised on the street. I never expected to get that kind of coverage, good or bad. I never expected to sell as many books as I have.

Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe - fascinating but too schematic to fit into my scheme. The most I could hope for was a sense of the vocabulary and some possible images.

Poetry is a deliberate attempt to make language suggestive and imprecise.

This is how we court girls in America. We grab them and kiss them. And if they don't like it, we do it again, harder and longer, until they surrender. It saves us hours of witty repartee.

the people of one nation alone cannot save their own children; each holds the responsibility for the others' children.

It was said of Miss Letitia that when money came into her possession it went out of circulation.

Don't waste the breath to save your face, When you have done your best, And even more is asked of you, Let fate decide the rest.

Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world

I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.