The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.

Arthur C. Clarke

He that has not religion to govern his morality, is not a dram better than my mastiff-dog; so long as you stroke him, and please him, and do not pinch him, he will play with you as finely as may be, he is a very good moral mastiff; but if you hurt him, he will fly in your face, and tear out your throat.

John Selden

These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.

Charles Manson

Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.

Oswald Chambers

There's a very fine line between a groove and a rut; a fine line between eccentrics and people who are just plain nuts.

Christine Lavin, from lyrics to

The West has been able to bring Afghanistan a much better health service, better education, better roads, a better economy, though some have benefited more some have benefited less from that economic well-being in Afghanistan.

Hamid Karzai

And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.

Virginia Woolf

Older fatherhood isn't all bad: testosterone rates drop about 1% per year as men age, making them less reactive and more patient, and a professionally established middle-aged man is likely to have more time and money to devote to his kids than a twenty-something who's just getting started.

Jeffrey Kluger

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

Henry David Thoreau

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

Robert Morgan

Everybody sung in my family.

Rod Stewart

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.

Thomas Jefferson