If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.

People thought becoming an adult meant that all your acts had consequences

Owning less is better than organizing more.

More countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development.

It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity. I hope that someday, our humanity might yet surpass our technology.

It began as research. I wrote of silences, of nights, I scribbled the indescribable. I tied down the vertigo.

Sometimes what I actually love to do is go to a farm and get fresh milk or watch a pig get slaughtered.

The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more child-like will be our faith

We may not have chosen the time, but the time has chosen us.

Look, the world is everywhere: satellites, end tables, the pink and white poinsettias outside the church; reunions and degrees. All those radiant asterisks . . . Soon it will all make sense.