Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.

Should he ever write an autobiography, he'd call it The Life and Death of a Male Body.

Philip Roth

You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water -- an inch deep and then the mud.

George MacDonald

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

Eric Hoffer

The cure for all ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word 'love.' It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.

Lydia Maria Child

Competition between footmen gave way during the second half of the 18th century to men racing against time over long distances. 'Pedestrians' (as the walkers were called) could win a very handsome fee for walking dozens -- or even hundreds -- of miles within a proscribed time. Side bets were, of course, very welcome.One of the more popular goals involved covering at least 100 miles in less than 24 hours. Those meeting this goal were (and still are) called Centurions.(quoted by Phil Howell in A Brief History of Racewalking in the United States, North American Racewalking Foundation)

William Gordon Wallace

Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant. This ideology is compounded from different sources: items that have survived from religion, items of empirical knowledge, items of protective skepticism, items culled for comfort from the superficial learning that is supplied. But the point is that common-sense can never teach itself, can never advance beyond its own limits, for as soon as the lack of fundamental learning has been made good, all items become questionable and the whole function of common-sense is destroyed. Common-sense can only exist as a category insofar as it can be distinguished from the spirit of inquiry, from philosophy.

John Berger

I think all of us certainly believed the statistics which said that probably 88% chance of mission success and maybe 96% chance of survival. And we were willing to take those odds.

Alan Shepard

It is not physical solitude that actually separates one from others; not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. How often in a large city, shaking hands with my friends, I have felt the wilderness stretching between us. Both of us were wandering in arid wastes, having lost the springs that nourished us -- or having found them dry. Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from

Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding...

Brian Greene

It's always well to be the smartest thinker, but is won't get you very far unless you're the plainest talker.

Source Unknown

It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child--a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem--and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium--when one child needs you more than the others--that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side.

Jodi Picoult