I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself and how little I deserve it.

Man is nature's sole mistake.

Look for knowledge not in books but in things themselves.

The House of Peers, throughout the war, did nothing in particular, and did it very well.

O that the gods would bring to a miserable end such fictitious, crazy, deformed labours, with which the minds of the studious are blinded!

Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.

Philosophy is for the few.

The magnetic force is animate, or imitates a soul; in many respects it surpasses the human soul while it is united to an organic body.

I am never, never, sick at sea. What never? No never! What never? Hardly ever.

The magnet's name the observing Grecians drew. From the magnetic region where it grew.

Holding on, holding out and holding fast when the going is tough constitutes a winning mindset.

You really shouldn’t trust a soul in this game. Not when everyone has something to gain or lose.

All you are is a bag of particles acting out the laws of physics. That to me is pretty clear.

The truth is, the family is much more creatively nourishing because you're playing on a full keyboard. Whereas when you're single, you're just playing the upbeat jazzy tunes.

I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.

We must always take from nature what we paint and always choose the most beautiful things.

Incarceration is as useful for addiction as it is for diabetes - i.e., not useful and potentially harmful, particularly for kids.

All the things I've read in my school books about England and the Queen were okay, but my eyes are the greatest book in the world.

It's a wild thing, that people have the ability to help each other by just relating to one another.

When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped.