Seek always for the best words and the happiest expression you can find.

As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.

The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me.

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

You must look into people, as well as at them.

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Cleanliness begins with the love for godliness

Your soul, your spirit and your body.

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself.

Nature is not human-hearted.

Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*.

There are writers who draw immediate attention to the fact that it's fiction. And I like some of that, but it doesn't really have the power.

No other group has internalized its self-hatred as much as blacks have. It would be difficult to find other groups who behave similarly in that their most esteemed members berate its poorest members.

Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears.

I never aspired to be up front. When I was a kid, I didn't ever look in the mirror with a hairbrush going, "Hey, I'm Elvis!"