“For, so inconsistent is human nature, especially in the ideal, that not to undertake a thing at all seems better than to undertake and come short.”

“The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.”

“Of course, in a novel, peoples hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to ...”

“Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be g...”

“For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all ones feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - ...”

“It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a...”

“Following religious principles because you fear the consequences isn't faith. Its superstition.”

“Wearing your feelings on your sleeve will end up being a chip on your shoulder.”

“In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God.”

“On the night of New Years Day, I thought of a wonderful New Years resolution for the men who run the world: get to know the people who only live in it.”

“The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation.”

“He was a consummate politician-- which is to say he was given to expedient speech and lacked even a vestigial spine.”

“Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.”

“The only honest way to approach the question of whiteness and blackness is to start by accepting that these are arbitrary categories that were invented in the 17th and 18th century in order to just...”

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be ...”