When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.
There can be no Creator, simply because his grief at the fate of his creation would be inconceivable and unendurable.
The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankind
One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.
There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.
Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.
One has a prejudice wherever one fears a transformation.
We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king.
My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard
The central difficulty lies in the fact that all of the sciences have made such great progress during the last century that they have got quite beyond the reach of man
If I write in my name to the agents of England and France residing in Asia and inform them that Japan is ready to make a commercial treaty with their countries, the number of steamers will be reduced from fifty to two or three.