If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

I believe God has heard my prayers. He will make it manifest in His own good time that He has heard me. I have recorded my petitions that when God has answered them, His name will be glorified.

privation is the cause of appetite

If you were to look back at me as a school kid you'd see a very quiet little church mouse kind of character.

Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.

It takes more than one dove to make peace in the Middle East.

If you are not living in joy, you are out of integrity with your soul.

You have to finish things - that's what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

If you want to feel happy, do something for yourself. If you want to feel fulfilled, do something for someone else.

With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.