It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition.

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.

Read to find life treasures

One of the reasons ordinary people are incapable of magic is simple dearth of conviction.

For every God there is a Satan, and because God made all of us godly, there is a Satan in us all.

I would love to do an electronic record. There's just so much to see and do and try. And life goes by.

Act happy, feel happy, be happy, without a reason in the world. Then you can love, and do what you will.

When a wise man chooses a sane basis for his arguments, it is no great task to speak well.

You cut a hole in the building and people can look inside and see the way other people really lived.. it's making space without building it

My great objective as a parliamentarian was to dramatise the deficiencies and devise practical government programs to deal with them. It was a cause that went to the heart of our way of life.

I don't have to listen to anything you have to say.

If the standard route for creating a family had worked for me, I wouldn't have met this child. I needed to know her. I needed to be her mother. She is, in every way my daughter.