American society as a whole can never achieve the outer-reaches of potential, so long as it tolerates the inner cities of despair.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Friedrich Nietzsche

The life of the cenobite is a human problem. When we speak of convents, those seats of error but innocence, of mistaken views but good intentions, of ignorance but devotion, of torment but martyrdom, we must nearly always say yes or no...The monastery is a renunciation. Self-sacrifice, even when misdirected, is still self-sacrifice. To assume as duty a strict error has its peculiar grandeur.

Victor Hugo

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

C.S. Lewis

A minority is always compelled to think. That is the blessing of being in the minority.

Leo Baeck

Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement -- and we will make the goal.

Jerome P. Fleishman

You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success, because either one gets in the way of your work.

Dave Van Ronk

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

Mao Zedong

A witty woman is a treasure a witty beauty is a power.

George Meredith

We didn't have a beauty shop as I grew up.

Jenifer Lewis

Every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.

Nathan Hale

Existence was given us for action. Our worth is determined by the good deed we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel,

Edgar F. Magnin

She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! Alas! She must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.

Jane Austen