I always knew that looking back on my tears would someday make me laugh, but I never knew that looking back on my laughter would someday make me cry.

The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.

Numbers are like people; torture them enough and they'll tell you anything.

Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.

With his hand upon the throttle-valve of crime.

Had she been light, like you, Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, She might ha' been a grandam ere she died; And so may you, for a light heart lives long.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

O happy earth, Whereon thy innocent feet doe ever tread!

Feast of Juliana of Norwich, Mystic, Teacher, c.1417 We of the churches often gather our robes away from contamination, and thank God that we are not as other men. We don't despise God's name; in fact, we call upon it constantly to justify ourselves... If we object to meat-eating, we declare that God is vegetarian; if we abhor war, we proclaim a pacifist Deity. He who turned water into wine to gladden a wedding it now accused by many of favouring that abominable fluid grape juice. There can hardly be a more evil way of taking God's name in vain than this way of presuming to speak in it. For here is spiritual pride, the ultimate sin, in action -- the sin of believing in one's own righteousness. The true prophet says humbly, "To me, a sinful man, God spoke." But the scribes and Pharisees declare, "When we speak, God agrees." They feel no need of a special revelation, for they are always, in their own view, infallible. It is this self-righteousness of the pious that most breeds atheism, by inspiring all decent, ordinary men with loathing of the enormous lie.

Success is a progressive realization of worthwhile, predetermined personal goals.

Hell has no exits.Heaven needs none.

Commemoration of George Augustus Selwyn, first Bishop of New Zealand, 1878 If there were a righteousness which a man could have of his own, then we should have to concern ourselves with the question of how it can be imparted to him. But there is not. The idea of a righteousness of one's own is the quintessence of sin.

Wise old owl lived in an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard: Why can't we all be like that bird.

Language is memory and metaphor.

The way of sinners is made plain with stones, but at the end thereof is the pit of hell.

Tetchy and wayward. -King Richard III. Act iv. Sc. 4.

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.

Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to publick opinion. This is the weak point of our defenses, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem the true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong the right.

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.