Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore... Unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible... It is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavors... to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown.

Anon., from a motivational poste

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.

Diogenes

The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

Oscar Wilde

Patience was not my strong point.

Lauren Bacall

I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be. It's wonderful to have someone like that around, you always feel you can count on them. You can go away and come back, you can change your mind and your hairdo and your politics, and when you get through doing all these upsetting things, you look around and there they are, just the way they were, just being.

Elizabeth Janeway

In order to judge of the form to be given to this institution the Senate, it will be proper to take a view of the ends to be served by it. These were,first, to protect the people against their rulers, secondly, to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.

James Madison

For the tiny percentage of people who are negatively affected by our embracing of standards, they can just get their sports somewhere else in the meantime. It's not like we're denying them hospital care.

Mike Davidson

Your journey never ends. Life has a way of changing things in incredible ways.

Alexander Volkov

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

Simone Weil, Human Personality 1

If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.

Thomas Szasz

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.

Philip Pullman

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

Arthur Schopenhauer