Fire and people do in this agree,They both good servants, both ill masters be.

Taste may be compared to that exquisite sense of the bee, which instantly discovers and extracts the quintessence of every flower, and disregards all the rest of it.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?

Habit is the cement of society, the comfort of life, and, alas! The root of error.

O wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound; Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; Created sick, commanded to be sound.

Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?

The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.

There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty.

Love will sacrifice more to others than friendship, but then it exacts more from them.

How happy is it for us, that the admiration of others should depend so much more on their ignorance than our perfection!

Poetry and visions, springing as they do from an ever-present sense of mortality, might easily appear morbid to the sturdycommon sense of a burgher-class in the making.

When we all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, we will have our true motives revealed.

A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, when he knows or suspects that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away.

Chase and I are in this for the long haul. I've stood before him and he's stood before me. And this is what it's all come down to: Chase Gartner is my future, my forever. And I, I am his.

The dialogue between client and architect is about as intimate as any conversation you can have, because when you're talking about building a house, you're talking about dreams.

Geometry is the foundation of all painting.

Nothing is ever enough when what you are looking for isn't what you really want.

Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.

What drew me to both study and activism was the formative experience of the civil rights movement.

I'm a very straightforward person. But that's fine for a comedian. Because a lot of times you're talking about everyone else.