Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beingsthat doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.

The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art.

Kurt Vonnegut

Every time I write something, I think, this is the most offensive thing I will ever write. But no. I always surprise myself.

Chuck Palahniuk

And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything As You Like It, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose and it's always daisy-time.

D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

Research is subordinated (not to a long-term social benefit) but to an immediate commercial profit. Currently, disease (not health) is one of the major sources of profit for the pharmaceutical industry, and the doctors are willing agents of those profits.

Walter Modell

Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.

George Bancroft

The mind, like a parachute, functions only when open.

Anonymous

There are many kinds of smiles, each having a distinct character. Some announce goodness and sweetness, others betray sarcasm, bitterness and pride; some soften the countenance by their languishing tenderness, others brighten by their spiritual vivacity.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Silence alone is worthy to be heard.

Henry David Thoreau

The wealth and prosperity of the country are only the comeliness of the body, the fullness of the flesh and fat; but the spirit is independent of them; it requires only muscle, bone and nerve for the true exercise of its functions. We cannot lose our liberty, because we cannot cease to think.

Sir Humphrey Davy

I've never preached one sermon on money, on just finances. I want to stay away from it.

Joel Osteen

The whole visible universe is but a storehouse of images and signs to which the imagination will give a relative place and value; it is a sort of pasture which the imagination must digest and transform.

Charles Baudelaire

I do not know much about politics, but I am trying to do the best I can with this administration until the time shall come for me to turn it over to somebody else.

William Howard Taft