When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

Your personal nature seeks its paradise.

Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.

Only those with no memory insist on their originality.

True valor lies between cowardice and rashness.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately... you usually don't use it at all. It uses you.

The spirit of man is an inward flame; a lamp the world blows upon but never puts out.

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.

Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.

Many have had their greatness made for them by their enemies.

It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.

You can have anything in this world you want, if you want it badly enough and you're willing to pay the price.

My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

When you get to a certain age, there is no coming back.

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.