It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong year - I think it would have been cool to be alive in the '60s.

A word to those of you out there who have yet to be offended by something I have said: Please be patient. I am working as fast as I can.

A horse is simply a horse.

My work is one long triumph over my limitations.

When I look back at the 1980s I pinch myself. Did I really do all that?

I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.

Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who have fallen from favor are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone.

It's very rare that you just get stuck with the ball. You're going to get somebody open.

A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.

Many a beggar at the crossway, or gray-haired shepherd on the plain, hath more of the end of all wealth than hundreds who multiply the means.