I had a lifelong quarrel with God, but in the end we made up.

Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, with which all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite... Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarreling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: It is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves.

Success in life, in anything, depends upon the number of persons that one can make himself agreeable to.

God Almighty never created a man half as wise as he looks.

Venerable to me is the hard hand,--crooked, coarse,--wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indispensably royal as of the sceptre of the planet.

In every object there is inexhaustible meaning.

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.