Life has a higher end, than to be amused

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

The world is governed by opinion.

Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it.

We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no others are, and to do what no other can do.

May your life preach more loudly than your lips.

Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.

Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.

All virtue lies in individual action, in inward energy, in self determination. There is no moral worth in being swept away by a crowd even toward the best objective.

It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind's dignity.

If you really want to be a writer, nobody can stop you -- and if you don't, nobody can help you.

When God created man and woman, he was thinking, 'Who shall I give the power to, to give birth to the next human being?' And God chose woman. And this is the big evidence that women are powerful.

I hope the Vandals had thorns in their sandals

It is the peculiar beauty of this method, gentlemen, and one which endears it to the really scientific mind, that under no circumstance can it be of the smallest possible utility.

Forget about Nobel prizes; they aren't really very important.

The only time the press doesn’t sensationalize information is when one of their own is kidnapped. Interesting how they show restraint then.

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?

I'm not a body with a soul, I'm a soul that has a visible part called the body

Civil government is an ordinance of God, to conserve the civil peace of a people, so far as concerns their bodies and goods.

What is this "heart"? If I tear open that chest of yours, will I see it there? If I smash open that skull of yours, will I see it there?