I hold we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.

I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps

When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery ... He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift.... There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.

Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day

Every person who has ever lived has lived an unbroken succession of unique occasions.

[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.

The best thing about animals is they don't talk much.