The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings.

A man may fall many times but he won't be a failure until he says someone pushed him.

Elmer G. Letterman

The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.

H. L. Mencken

The two most powerful weapons are courage and persistence. Nothing can stop a person armed with both.

Scott Sorrell

I still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that, even within that, there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, although that doesn't eradicate the reality of the suffering. It's all true at once, kind of humming and sublime.

George Saunders

When you are used to the kind of life -of never getting anything you want- you stop knowing what it is you want.

Haruki Murakami

We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet

Annie Dillard, Total Eclipse Tea

People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too.

Jim Valvano

I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

...I have never known a movement in the theater that did not work direct and serious harm. Indeed, I have sometimes felt that the very people associated with various uplifting activities in the theater are people who are astoundingly lacking in idealism.

Minnie Maddern Fiske, Mrs. Fiske

That's a big deal for kids, when they come into the kitchen and the teacher is drinking coffee with mom. They react differently on the next day when you say: 'Sit down and shut-up!'

Ed O'Neill

For to be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully, is more than simple endurance it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph.

Thomas Mann

When I was a young boy, my father taught me that to be a good Catholic, I had to confess at church if I ever had impure thoughts about a girl. That very evening I had to rush to confess my sin. And the next night, and the next. After a week, I decided religion wasn't for me.

Fidel Castro, "The Economist", A