The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.

Not to engage in this pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.

All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.

Erotic or sexual love can truly be love if it is not selfishly sexual or lustful.

Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.

One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.

More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

A good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser.

To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.

The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

I used to use a lot of words in the paintings but stopped because it created a narrative - or an answer to a question.

God deliver me from my friends! I'll take care of my enemies myself.

If I a fancy take To black and blue, That fancy doth it beauty make.

It is love that believes the resurrection.

You kin tame a bear. You kin tame a wild-cat and you kin tame a panther. ... You kin tame arything, son, excusin' the human tongue.

Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when.

America was founded on Christians not trusting each other, and they sometimes seemed more willing to reach out to the godless than to someone from another sect.

I am told that the clinical definition of insanity is the tendency to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Any time a body goes outside the environmental conditions for which it developed it has to acclimate.