Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
All sins are attempts to fill voids.
The capacity to suffer varies more than anything that I have observed in human nature.
The whole universe is contained within a single human being – you.
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.
Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.
Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.
Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.
A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.