Nature protects us in our uttermost losses by a density through which conviction is slow to penetrate.

Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends.

There are half hours that dilate to the importance of centuries.

There is no robbery so terrible as the robbery committed by those who think they are doing right.

The stoicism that comes of endurance has something of death in it.

There should be a colossal mother going about the world to turn men over her lap and give them the slipper. They pine for it.

To see men admitting that you are what you believe yourself to be, is one of the triumphs of existence.

What we suffer for is enriched by our suffering until it becomes priceless.

We cannot leave the expression of our lives to those better qualified than we are, however dear they may be.

People incline to doubt the superiority of a person who will associate with them.

One meets and wakes you to vivid life in an immortal hour. Thousands could not do it through eternity.

I am but a pawn on the chessboard of life!

Doomed people celebrate peace with sky bombs.

Nobody appreciates deliverance like those who've nearly been destroyed.

A herbarium is better than any illustration; every botanist should make one.

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

The only one interested in hearing your sad story is . . . you; and even you wish you didn't have to relive it again!

The soul that feeds on books alone - I count that soul exceeding small That lives alone by book and creed, - A soul that has not learned to read.

For she had embodied the Great Perhaps--she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps.

If we are desperate, though , if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes direction.

I have family obligations and all that stuff. I get my kids six weeks in the summer, which is a real intense period of time. I'm with them every minute of the day