Pessimism is carefully cultivated in some intellectual circles, as if it were a precious plant that the human race could not afford to lose.

Those who have suffered, who have known poverty or oppression, are generally the most prone to kindness. Perhaps it is well to endure some misery if only to learn this lesson.

The only atheism is the denial of truth.

A disbelief in God does not result in a belief in nothing; disbelief in God usuallyresults in a belief in anything.

Some people would be discontented in Paradise, others ... are cheerful in a graveyard.

Life is magical. There is something wonderful in being alive, in having within one's self all sorts of possibilities.

So this is happiness, that journeyman.

We must rejoice when love is great, and pardon its excess, for love is the staff of life, and life without love is life in vain.

Vanity is easily forgiven, for we are all vain, and even as we laugh at the weakness of others we feel that their vanity has touched the responding chord of our own.

There are tides of justice surging to the unknown shores of right; Stars of truth that seek a setting in the dark, untutored night.

Tact is not a small thing; in the battle of life it is more powerful than a bludgeon.

All that helter-skelter about strings and memories was only relevant in the dark. It was light out now and time to put away childish things.

Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master.

I will free NASA from the restriction of serving primarily as a logistics agency for low-earth orbit activity.

Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

I just need the junkies and the liars and the thieves, I need the pimps, prostitutes and pushers out in the streets. That's where I'm seeking God, cause that's where He found me.

Sociopaths are just like everybody else in that some of them are really brilliant, some of them are really stupid, and most of them are somewhere in between.

The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

I've always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks - you learn craft, you learn structure, all that - as you go.

Be not afraid of greatness.

The creature born is the creature dying.