Our bodies are but the anvils of pain and disease and our minds the hives of unnumbered cares.

Talking much is a sign of vanity, for the one who is lavish with words is cheap in deeds.

But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust.

If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee, and be thy love.

But true love is a durable fire, In the mind ever burning, Never sick, never old, never dead, From itself never turning.

The most divine light only shineth on those minds which are purged from all worldly dross and human uncleanliness.

But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend.

[It is a basic principle of a tyrant] to unarm his people of weapons, money and all means whereby they resist his power.

So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth.

It is not truth, but opinion that can travel the world without a passport.

Whoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.

Reality is seeing that the peace in a picture is a dream.

The opposite of play is not work—the opposite of play is depression.

It seems so simple now, but it took me a long time to figure out that happiness is experienced when we finally give ourselves permission to let go of the things that make us sad.

…our world did not fall because we did not believe in fairness… our world fell because it could no longer support the enormous weight we had put upon it, in the name of fairness.

What careful planning, what painstaking attention to detail, goes into extinguishing a man's life! Far more than the hit-or-miss, haphazard circumstances of igniting it.("New York Blues")

One does not beg for a glass of water from the devil.

It is what you think of this situation that governs you and not the situation itself. Causation is always in mind and not in things.

It's pretty sad that when people see a guy buying flowers, they assume he's in trouble.

What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.

To the elitist hedonist, life is the avoidance of boredom and routine.