Quotes About Author

The great mystery is not the cures, but the infinite compassion which is their source.

It seems indeed that the Church today is one of the few institutions in the world willing to defend human rights regardless of who the oppressor is.

Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it.

Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.

Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.

The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.

A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and doesn't give me companionship in return

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.

They who suspect a Mephistophiles, or sneering, satirical devil, under all, have not learned the secret of true humor, which sympathizes with gods themselves, in view of their grotesque, half-finished creatures.

They required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still.

If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world.

I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.

Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag & exaggeration.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obli­gation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. 

Have you got in your wood for this winter? What else have you got in? Of what use a great fire on the hearth, and a confounded little fire in the heart?

The false society of men— —for earthly greatness All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.

We are all the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me.

The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease.