“Dare to be competent. Competency is what makes everyone remain at peace when things are being handled by you. Watch yourself if everyone feels uncomfortable just because it’s you doing it.”

“Many people turn to alcohol to try to drown the [cries] and longings of the soul. Others attempt to quiet the longings of their souls in other ways. Nothing but God ever completely satisfies, because the soul is made for God.”

“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.” —Letter to John Norvell, 14 June 1807 [Works 10:417--18]” 

Now, however, he had learned to see the great, the eternal, the infinite in everything, and therefore, in order to look at it, to enjoy his contemplation of it, he naturally discarded teh telescope through which he had till then been gazing over the heads of men, and joyfully surveyed the ever-changeing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked, the happier and more seren he was. The awful question: What for? a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair of a man's head falls.”

“Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.”

“La vie c’est comme la bicyclette : quand on arrête de pédaler on tombe.”

“The Log in My Eye You hypocrite, first get the beam of timber out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the tiny particle out of your brother’s eye. MATTHEW 7:5”

“God doesn’t comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.”

“I do not expect old heads on young shoulders.”

“Remember, you can earn more money, but when time is spent is gone forever.”

“Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.”

“If your passion does not keep you sleepless, you can't be a good beginner. When passion itches, a great hand scratches... Wake up, it's your time to rise above idleness!”

“The Antichrist . . . will be the embodiment of evil, and will have great power to deceive those who choose to follow him.”

“There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you.”

“there is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling. It is why you where born and how you become most truly alive”