Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection.

Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.

A great mind must be androgynous.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

That gracious thing, made up of tears and light.

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.

Religion is the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It alone will gentilize, if unmixed with cant.

Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face.

Leaving one religion for the sake of another one is like breaking with a rapist for the sake of dating a misogynist.

October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.

Life is the movie you see through your own eyes. It makes little difference what's happening out there. It's how you take it that counts.

Conscience gets a lot of credit that really belongs to cowardice.

Go as far as you can see; when you get there you'll be able to see farther.

The object of art is to give life shape.

I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.

Let the clock and the earth do their own thing... Let the comings and goings of life continue... But YOU stay HERE and NOW. This exercise is to bring you to the Eternal Present where it all is.

I sing because I'm happy.

Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave.