Nothing is black or white.
I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.
Where you stand depends on where you sit.
Appearances matter – and remember to smile.
It is not where you start but how high you aim that matters for success.
We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.
It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.
Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.
For disappointments, that come not by our own folly, they are the trials or corrections of Heaven: and it is our own fault, if they prove not our advantage.
Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.
You are perfect. An exquisitely fine work of art, labor of love, suspended in silence. Bejeweled, trembling, kissed by a breeze, mesmerized by your beauty. You await in silence, beckoning me to a silken-wrapped slumber.
I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
The walking of Man is falling forwards.
She has lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.
It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.
The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.
