What most we wish, with ease we fancy near.

How blessings brighten as they take their flight.

Too low they build who build below the skies.

A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.

Narcissus is the glory of his race: For who does nothing with a better grace?.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man!... Midway from nothing to the Deity!

Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew, She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven.

The clouds may drop down titles and estates, and wealth may seek us, but wisdom must be sought.

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.

Who lives to Nature, rarely can be poor ; who lives to fancy, never can be rich.

Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels; how heavily we drag the load of life!

God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.

Marriage is really tough because you have to deal with feelings... and lawyers.

when your child is in trouble, the first thing you do is blame yourself.

The experiments show quite clearly that, as you resist more and more temptation, you're actually more and more likely to fail.

Bookstores never seem to know where to put me on the shelves. But I do. I love my genre and I love those writers, so I am happy to be considered a crime writer. That's what I consider myself.

Definitions are temporary verbalizations of concepts, and concepts- particularly difficult concepts- are usually revised repeatedly as our knowledge and understanding grows.

I try to avoid barbecue potato chips. They're my weakness.

I think [Bush] would like to hand his father Saddam Hussein's head and win his approval for what happened after the Gulf War.

My own view is that one cannot be religious in general any more than one can speak language in general; at any given moment one speaks French or English or Swahili or Japanese, but not 'language.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.