When pain can't bless, heaven quits us in despair.

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!

My brain as the engine, with thoughts trailing to the caboose, on a one-track mind we keep going forward.

There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

My first job as commander in chief is to keep the American people safe.

Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.

My one light American Spirit that I smoke once a week, on Saturday night.

If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.

Women hand sight down through the generations. Mother to daughter.

The ancient human question 'Who am I?' leads inevitably to the equally important question 'Whose am I?' - for there is no self outside of relationship.

Gardens can be sharp and spiky as well as rose-embowered and honeysuckle-twined: there are corners and settings where thistles are not such an asinine taste after all.

The thing I care about is my weight - I'm as fanatical about it as a member of Girls Aloud. I weigh myself every morning. I know exactly what I want to be - 82kg - and I try to stick to it.