The ground of all great thoughts is sadness.

The death-bed of a day, how beautiful!

What are ye orbs? The words of God? the Scriptures of the skies?

There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.

For ivy climbs the crumbling hall To decorate decay.

Respect is what we owe; love, what we give.

Surely the stars are images of love.

Art is a man's nature; nature is God's art.

Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.

Death, thou art infinite; it is life is little.

Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God; And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, To show the most of Heaven he hath in him.

Accidental, unintended connections are the best concocted by the universe long before realizing the moon's heartbeat was waiting for you.

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod

Future public education will require involvement and collaboration among various local, civic, private and nonprofit entities, a concept I like to refer to as 'community entrepreneurship.'

I'm very interested in how idealistic young people can get caught up in all sorts of systems of extreme belief, you know, whether it's cults or whether it's suicide bombers.

Life itself is a school, and Nature always a fresh study.

Never underestimate the totality of chaos and betrayal that comes through currency debasement.

Wizards was my homage to Tolkien in the American idiom. I had read Tolkien, understood Tolkien, and wanted to do a sort of fantasy for American kids, and that was Wizards.

Could your medicine be a cell, not a pill? Could your medicine be an organ that's created outside the body? Could your medicine be an environment?

We should realize there are so many things that us together rather than the things that keep us apart.

Quite possibly, what I call happiness may coincide with what others call the moment of imminent danger