Love will sacrifice more to others than friendship, but then it exacts more from them.

Taste may be compared to that exquisite sense of the bee, which instantly discovers and extracts the quintessence of every flower, and disregards all the rest of it.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?

Habit is the cement of society, the comfort of life, and, alas! The root of error.

O wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound; Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; Created sick, commanded to be sound.

Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?

The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.

There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty.

How happy is it for us, that the admiration of others should depend so much more on their ignorance than our perfection!

Pleasure is the business of the young, business the pleasure of the old.

When you can actually measure your day by how much time is converted into products, then you are a great force on the earth.

My attitude will always be based on how you treat me.

I tend to sing opera and showtunes in the shower. I don't know why, but when I get in the shower I turn into this big fat opera lady.

Your dunce who can't do his sums always has a taste for the infinite.

My own momma turned her back on me, and that's my momma.

I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people, listening to music.

Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?

The world is full of people who are very clever at seeming much smarter than they really are.

Frugality includes all the other virtues.

Education has to be welcomed as a Spiritual Practice for the establishment of Peace in the individual heart as well as in society including the human commonwealth.