To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.

People's opinions of themselves are legible in their countenances.

As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room

Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.

Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind, that enables us to do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.

Passing too eagerly upon a provocation loses the guard and lays open the body; calmness and leisure and deliberation do the business much better.

Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good eating and ill-living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property.

A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading.

Patient waiting is often the highest way of doing God's will.

Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.

Envy, like a cold prison, benumbs and stupefies; and, conscious of its own impotence, folds its arms in despair.

The only things I can’t offer you are children and politicians: the first is illegal and the second is expensive

I remembered reading somewhere that if you smile at something, it automatically makes you happier.

Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.

The ultimate is not to win, but to reach within the depths of your capabilities and to compete against yourself.

Do you wear a diaphragm everywhere you go?' I want to scream, but stop myself because the idea really excites me.

You do have to live through things, and to live through things is to observe want, and to observe lacking. Even if the hunger is a curiosity.

Writing time has to be created.

They can't find my house now because I keep it very quiet where I live.

And I realized that sometimes the greatest triumphs in your life come in on little cat feet and sit on silent haunches and it's up to you to see it before it moves on.

Yeah, I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn to skate really good, and if I can't, I'm going to get hurt doing it.