The abominable effort to take one's sins with one to paradise.

Oh, how powerfully the magnet of illusion attracts.

Gutzkow

America is promises to take! America is promises to us to take them.

Archibald MacLeish

One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful thing to do. The Greeks themselves chose the ideal over the real in their geometry and demonstrated very well that far more could be achieved by consideration of abstract line and form than by a study of the real lines and forms of the world; the greater understanding achieved through abstraction could be applied most usefully to the very reality that was ignored in the process of gaining knowledge.

Isaac Asimov

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

Stephen Leacock, Literary Lapses

Optimism is the cheerful frame of mind that enables a teakettle to sing, though in hot water up to its nose.

Source Unknown

In order to excel, you must be completely dedicated to your chosen sport. You must also be prepared to work hard and be willing to accept constructive criticism. Without one-hundred percent dedication, you won't be able to do this.

Willie Mays

Virtually everyone needs motivation of some sort, but when you are in love - that is motivation enough, it turns many into poets and painters, it spurs the creativity in you.

Bernard Kelvin Clive

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

Quentin Crisp

The most important thing is to stay positive.

Saku Koivu

I think the true test of a pop song, for me, and I've talked to a lot of other writers about this, is you take your demo, you pop it in your car and you drive down Sunset Blvd. to Santa Monica, and that's the Hollywood car test.

Ryan Tedder

The constant questioning of our values and achievements is a challenge without which neither science nor society can remain healthy.

Aage Niels Bohr

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

Bill Murray