Instead of establishing facts, we have to overthrow errors; instead of ascertaining what is, we have to chase from our imaginations what is not.

Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave.

Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.

Equality! Where is it, if not in education? Equal rights! They cannot exist without equality of instruction.

Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.

Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning.

... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.

Trust me, there are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no more fit to lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped.

These will vary in every human being; but knowledge is the same for every mind, and every mind may and ought to be trained to receive it.

the mode of delivering a truth makes, for the most part, as much impression on the mind of the listener as the truth itself.

He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.

May the Lord grant you grace to read and understand the Holy Scriptures.

Upon the one thing every writer absolutely must have, and that is intellectual curiosity.

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.

I've always been a writer, I've always been a storyteller, but I never thought about screenwriting.

The job of arguing with the umpire belongs to the manager, because it won't hurt the team if he gets thrown out of the game.

I put my filter on, though, and I only see things people I follow [on Twitter] write now. So, I don't even know anymore [ trolls].

Imagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints.

I have the mouth of a sailor.

To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.

I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train.