Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

John Locke

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Jane Austen

I do think the heart can balance out the mind, if your heart is in a good place it can give you the strength to do the right thing and behave the right way and overcome the mind.

Alexis Arguello

Domestic discretionary spending on education and health care and the environment has been growing at 2 to 3 percent a year. He says we have to rein it in, but he ignores the spending category that is the big spike in the budget.

John Spratt

We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions.

Ian Percy

My mother smokes me out. We'll get these long periods of me thinking I'm too busy to call her up or e-mail her, and she'll send me something. My mom's a real whiner. I love her to death, but she always sends me these 'woe is me' things. I think she might be Jewish. I'm not sure. She's Baptist-Jewish, which is a double whammy.

Ronnie Dunn

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

Charles Caleb Colton

I like doing a funny show where I don't have to act and fall in love with a girl.

Norm MacDonald

I was the little, funny one. I felt I was the child among grown women.

Julie Walters

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you … we are in charge of our Attitudes.

Charles R. Swindoll

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

Helen Terry

Many a play is like a painted backdrop, something to be looked at from the front. An Ibsen play is like a black forest, something you can enter, something you can walk about in. There you can lose yourself: you can lose yourself. And once inside, you find such wonderful glades, such beautiful, sunlit places.

Minnie Maddern Fiske, Mrs. Fiske