How few are our real wants and how easy is it to satisfy them! Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable.

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.

The mind is like a sheet of white paper in this, that the impressions it receives the oftenest, and retains the longest, are black ones.

Children always turn towards the light. Oh that grown-up people in this world became like little children!

The next best thing to a very good joke is a very bad one.

A weak mind sinks under prosperity, as well as under adversity.

The virtue of Christianity is obedience.

Everybody has his own theatre, in which he is manager, actor, prompter, playwright, sceneshifter, boxkeeper, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into the bargain.

Knowledge is the parent of love; wisdom, love itself.

The business of philosophy is to circumnavigate human nature.

By the ancients, courage was regarded as practically the main part of virtue; by us, though I hope we are not less brave, purity is so regarded now.

Let thy pure act be thy prayer.

May God guide you along the best pathway for your life.

Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things our own meditation must form our judgement.

if you ask me, nobody really likes people who are always doing their duty.

The early Christians did not say, in dismay, 'Look what the world has come to,' but, in delight, 'Look what has come to the world!”

[My mother] would have me smothered like the Princes in the Tower if I showed any inclination for being an artist. She thought all artists little better than lunatics.

As I read the Qur'an and prayed the Islamic prayers, a door to my heart was unsealed and I was immersed in an overwhelming tenderness.

My goal was to avoid bloodshed. But unfortunately there was some bloodshed, after all.

What we preach is what we get. We are farmers sowing seed. If we are unhappy with the harvest we’re reaping, we should sow different seed. If we want different results, we preach different messages.

I used to comb my hair back and do stupid stuff