I don't know why people question the academic training of an athlete. Fifty percent of the doctors in this country graduated in the bottom half of their classes.

But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!

Whoever acquires knowledge and does not practice it resembles him who ploughs his land and leaves it unsown.

The sun was down, And all the west was paved with sullen fire. I cried, "Behold! the barren beach of hell At ebb of tide."

No steps backward.

Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom, See their own feathers pluck'd, to wing the dart, Which rank corruption destines for their heart!

I will light in your heart the lamp of understanding, which shall not be put out until what you about to write is finished.

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star.

Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.

Feast of Hildegard, Abbess of Bingen, Visionary, 1179 That earth and that heaven, which spent God himself, Almighty God, six days in finishing, Moses sets up in a few syllables, in one line: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. If a Livie or a Guicciardine, or such extensive and voluminous authors had had this story in hand, God must have made another world, to have made them a library to hold their books, of the making of this world. Into what wire would they have drawn out this earth! Into what leaf-gold would they have beat out these heavens! It may assist our conjecture herein, to consider, that amongst those men, who proceed with a sober modesty and limitation in their writing, & make a conscience not to clog the world with unnecessary books, yet the volumes which are written by them, upon the beginning of Genesis, are scarce less than infinite. God did no more but say, Let this & this be done; and Moses doth no more but say, that upon God's saying it was done. God required not Nature to help him to do it; Moses required not Reason to help him believe.

Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.

When a man puts on a Character he is a stranger to, there's as much difference between what he appears, and what he is really in himself, as there is between a VIzor and a Face.

Or merry swains, who quaff the nut-brown ale, And sing enamour'd of the nut-brown maid.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

I dress for women and I undress for men.

Surer to prosper than prosperity could have assur'd us.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 Continuing a short series on forgiveness: He who has not forgiven an enemy has not yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life.