The poet in prose or verse - the creator - can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has forcibly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them.

How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.

The conscience is the most flexible material in the world. Today you cannot stretch it over a mole hill; while tomorrow it can hide a mountain.

He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite.

Genius is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose.

Men are valued, not for what they are, but for what they seem to be.

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday.

A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry to a woman.

Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes.

Love has no thought of self! Love buys not with the ruthless usurer's gold The loathsome prostitution of a hand Without a heart! Love sacrifices all things To bless the thing it loves!

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh.

Failure is only but a temporary phenomenon.

You don't even care enough about us to hate us, do you?

Appreciate your mom. She is wiser than you think and stronger than you know. Be thankful.

Love is not only the story of butterflies or birds

How we deal with the AIDS epidemic should be one of the greatest ways that the world gets measured. The report card for this era.

You get the odd person [in social media] that will write something nasty and the trick is not to engage with them on any level.

Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.

In time, and as one comes to benefit from experience, one learns that things will turn out neither as well as one hoped nor as badly as one feared.

We live in a very peculiar world. Democracy isn't discussed, as if it was taken for granted, as if democracy had taken God's place, who is also not discussed.

It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.