Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.

A mighty monarch in the days of oldMade offer of high honour, wealth and gold,To one who should produce in form conciseA motto for his guidance, terse yet wise---A precept, soothing in his hours forlorn,Yet one that in his prosperous days would warn.Many the maxims sent the king, men say.The one he chose: This too shall pass away.Oh, jewel sentence from the mine of truth!What riches it contains for age or youth.No stately epic, measured and sublime,So comforts, or so counsels, for all timeAs these few words. Go write them on your heartAnd make them of your daily life a part.Has some misfortune fallen to your lot?This too will pass away--absorb the thought.And wait; your waiting will not be in vain,Time gilds with gold the iron links of pain.The dark to-day leads into light to-morrow;There is no endless joy, no endless sorrow.Are you upon earth's heights? No cloud in view?Go read your motto once again: This tooShall pass away; fame, glory, place and power,They are but little baubles of the hour,Flung by the ruthless years down in the dust.Take warning and be worthy of God's trust.Use well your prowess while it lasts; leave bloom,Not blight, to mark your footprints to the tomb.The truest greatness lies in being kind,The truest wisdom in a happy mind.He who desponds, his Maker's judgment mocks;The gloomy Christian is a paradox.Only the sunny soul respects its God.Since life is short we need to make it broad;Since life is brief we need to make it bright.Then keep the old king's motto well in sight,And let its meaning permeate each day.Whatever comes, This too shall pass away.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Po

Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.

Albert Einstein

There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved.

Thomas Fuller

The only time you fail is when you fall down and stay down.

Stephen Richards

Remember the poor - it costs nothing

Mark Twain

To be fond of learning is near to wisdom; to practice with vigor is near to benevolence; and to be conscious of shame is near to fortitude. He who knows these three things

Confucius

My humour has always come from anger, but I have to make sure I don't just get angry and jump on a soapbox.

Carl Hiaasen

You have to be the bravest person in the world to go out every day, being yourself when no one likes who you are.

Matthew Dicks

Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.

William Blake

Younger women have no problem in reconciling beauty with ambitions as a professional woman.

Camille Paglia

Freedom -- to walk free and own no superior.

Walt Whitman

Time grants a unique perspective which allows us to see events through a filter of accumulated wisdom.

Christopher Earle