Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

Our first and last love is self-love.

The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

Whoever has My commandments and keeps them loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and show Myself to him.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

Any God I ever found in church, I brought in myself.

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.

I wasn't used to children and they were getting on my nerves. Worse, it appeared that I was a child, too. I hadn't known that before; I thought I was just short.

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.

writers who go outside the lines when they draw pictures of the world are seldom rewarded for their efforts.

Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.

Maybe we should hold the next [Olympic] games in Afghanistan and hope the Soviets pull out of that one too.

The good thing about working on the books for 14 years before they hit the shelves is that I worked out most of the kinks long before they were published.