This is Alvin Smith, said Cooper. He's a man of inestimable abilities, but only because nobody has cared enough to estimate them.

There is no reason for beauty. It just is.

Erin Kellison

Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!Thou art the Potter and I am the clay.

Chaim Potok

I like to say magic is the world's second oldest profession, a mystical and often awe-inspiring spectacle that, throughout the ages, has blended superstition, trickery and religion.

Criss Angel

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

C.S. Lewis

I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It's funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I'm not religious at all. I have no religion.

Sarah Silverman

Let's hope brands recognize that the true power of this technology is not its reach but its ability to communicate substance that adds meaning to our lives. Otherwise, brands will be investing in technology that consumers simply won't buy.

Simon Mainwaring

One of the effects of a safe and civilized life is an immense oversensitiveness which makes all the primary emotions somewhat disgusting. Generosity is as painful as meanness, gratitude as hateful as ingratitude.

George Orwell

Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ...We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.

Diane Ackerman

People always have an opinion. Doesn't mean it's right, doesn't mean it's wrong, but we have to respect their opinion.

Michael Clarke Duncan

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

John Ruskin

It's kind of ironic that the two sports with the greatest characters, boxing and horse racing, have both been on the decline. In both cases it's for the lack of a suitable hero.

Dick Schaap

I enjoy writing but I much prefer the experience of having written.

Fareed Zakaria