My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.

Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.

We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.

There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.