Beauty is truth's smile when she holds her own face in a perfect mirror. 

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Religion is a matter of the heart. Not physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one's own religion.

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history. l 

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temple; my philosophy is kindness.

Ultimately, education in its real sense is the pursuit of truth. It is an endless journey through knowledge and enlightenment.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.

Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla.