If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul; you haven’t experienced poetry.

To be great, truly great, you have to be the kind of person who makes the others around you great.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it.

If in 100 years I am only known as the man who invented Sherlock Holmes then I will have considered my life a failure.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.

Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves.

I am strong against everything, except against the death of those I love. He who dies gains; he who sees others die loses.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.

There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?

I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.

Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.

No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be. Not all the books on all the shelves – but what the teachers are themselves.

Vanity keeps persons in favor with themselves who are out of favor with all others.

They do not love that do not show their love.

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

You don’t need another person, place or thing to make you whole. God already did that. Your job is to know it.

When I say ‘I am a Christian’, I’m not shouting ‘I’m saved’. I’m whispering ‘I get lost’. That is why I chose this way.

If you feel your value lies in being merely decorative, I fear that someday you might find yourself believing that’s all that you really are.

Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.

Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay . . . small acts of kindness and love.

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.