The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

There is a realm in which miracles are possible and do take place. The door to this realm is the belief in all possibilities and YOU are the key.

What one has to do usually can be done.

No one can guarantee success in war but only deserve it.

I'm a hopeless 19th-century romantic.

I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.

Nature is all the body of God we mortals will ever see.

Human beings were behaving as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.

A blue dog, you know, is the opposite of a yellow dog. And a yellow dog was somebody who was willing to follow his party even when he knew it was wrong.

What I love about my daughter is that she is going to definitely allow me and force me to change my life and slow down and make it more about the real things in the world.

Don’t get me wrong. Being a mom is no picnic. Raising the kids is the mother’s responsibility. It’s a thankless, solitary job, like sheriff or Pope.