Superstition moulds nature into an arbitrary semblance of the supernatural, and then bows down to the work of its own hands.

Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.

Pain has its own noble joy, when it starts a strong consciousness of life, from a stagnant one.

Colors answer feeling in man; shapes answer thought; and motion answers will.

One dupe is as impossible as one twin.

The worst education which teaches self-denial, is better than the best which teaches everything else, and not that.

Enthusiasm is grave, inward, self-controlled; mere excitement, outward, fantastic, hysterical, and passing in a moment from tears to laughter.

Emotion turning back on itself, and not leading on to thought or action, is the element of madness.

Faith in a better than that which appears is no less required by art than by religion.

A man without earnestness is a mournful and perplexing spectacle. But it is a consolation to believe, as we must of such a one, that he is the most effectual and compulsive of all schools.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

At its most fundamental, language is an act of shared attention, and without the fundamentally human willingness to listen to what another person is saying, language would not work.

If you're happy on your own you are going to be okay.

There is nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

Even well-known historians like Edward Gibbon are talking about how the soldiers of the 18th century were not able to do the same type of exercise [like Romans].

I'm quite dyslexic in school.

Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.

There is something haunting in the light of the moon.

I really admire really good reporters. Obviously not the gossip ones, but it could be quite an interesting profession, depending on what you're investigating.

I'm a professional historian. I do my research. I have a PhD. What does my race have to do with it?

I feel like I'm indirectly showing people, not that there's another way, but just that if you really have a dream, you should try and give it a go.