Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical

The bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches; and many a blithe heart dances under coarse wool.

Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.

It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot.

Do not judge from mere appearances.

No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother's love.

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.

Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.

Neutral men are the devil's allies.

Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are.

Heaven never defaults. The wicked are sure of their wages, sooner or later.

Education is no substitute for intelligence.

There is no shame in being illiterate. One need only feel ashamed when one denies the opportunity to learn.

Shirtless, they’d stretch out in the long grass and take the healing brunt of a noontime sun that gave no clue of the thunderheads it already, in secret, had begun to breed.

You're going on birth control...or I will smash your truck-Allison Young

Back seat drivers don’t know the feel of the wheel but they sho’ know how to make a fuss" Bob Dylan/Bonnie Raitt, “Let’s Keep It Between Us,” 1982

I have a younger brother.

Can I find a poetic that can be subversive enough to grab people in some subliminal way, to where they feel that they are altered and have had an experience that belonged to them?

The American Negro has been entirely brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking of himself, as he should, as a part of the non-white peoples of the world.

. . . in the full tide of successful experiment.

All critics have the responsibility to tease out the social ideas and social problems in a movie. I don't feel an obligation to do that because I'm black.