The law is a battery, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrow as they reach the sky.

As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.

The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

Discouragement is the cancer of great things.

I'm being haunted, " she blurted out. "My dear, " he cooed. "Turn yourself into a tourist attraction and charge admission.

I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.

I had the most beautiful set of theories you ever knew when I started out as a schoolma'am, but every one of them has failed me at some pinch or another.

The War That Will End War.

When you're nursing and you're working 18-hour days, that's pretty hard

Mystical state, madness, how it frightens people. How utterly crazy they become, remote, rude, peculiar, cruel, taunting, farouche as wild beasts who have smelled danger, the unthinkable.

There's no second chance on stage, and I was trained to make the most of my first chance.

It takes me awhile to find something that I'm passionate about. I'm reading a lot and thinking a lot, and torturing myself a lot because I'm feeling really guilty for not writing something today.

I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.