The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done

How blessings brighten as they take their flight.

Too low they build who build below the skies.

A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.

Narcissus is the glory of his race: For who does nothing with a better grace?.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man!... Midway from nothing to the Deity!

Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew, She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven.

The clouds may drop down titles and estates, and wealth may seek us, but wisdom must be sought.

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.

Who lives to Nature, rarely can be poor ; who lives to fancy, never can be rich.

Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels; how heavily we drag the load of life!

I hope I haven't given you the impression that I consider kissing intrinsically irrational.

Your heart will always open again if you let it.

Carry your light to every dark corner.

Writing is the act of discovery.

Decapitation is a fanciful strategy.

Patrick Henry didn't say, "Give me safety, or give me death."

[E]mpathy - not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance - is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

The only unforgivable sin is deliberate cruelty.

I think there's something that happens at 40 where you settle into your own skin and you stop caring what people think - you realize life is a gift from God and you want to live it to the fullest.