Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
It’s extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. There is so much more out there than what connects to us.
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.
When people are protecting something truly special to them, they truly can become...as strong as they can be.
Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
All sins are attempts to fill voids.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
In many people it is already an impertinence to say 'I'.
People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can't be fixed.
Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passion, his mistakes and his weaknesses.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be
A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.
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.
Our true nationality is mankind.
Human history is in essence a history of ideas.
There are four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. That’s four million solutions to the problem of staying alive.