He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature... is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.

Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within, going abroad only for audience, and spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase to the distance and character of the ear we speak to

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A bare assertion is not necessarily the naked truth.

George D. Prentice

He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.

George Bernard Shaw

A duty dodged is like a debt unpaid; it is only deferred, and we must come back and settle the account at last.

Joseph Fort Newton

Talking is the disease of age.

Ben Johnson

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

Arthur Schopenhauer

When you cease to dream you cease to live.

Malcolm Forbes

If I had not actually got into this work and been called of God, I would back out. But I cannot back out: I have no doubt of the truth.

Joseph Smith Jr.

For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy

Bertrand Russell

I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who returned home after being absent for more than twenty years and was recognized only by his dog.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

...if it weren't for you, mornings wouldn't be so comforting - slippers wouldn't scrape through the rooms of my heart...

John Geddes

It takes that je ne sais quoi which we call sophistication for a woman to be magnificent in a drawing-room when her faculties have departed but she herself has not yet gone home.

James Thurber