We are born to action and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding action has power over us from the first.

People of a vertain rank will always keep a cool distance from common people, as if they were afraid to lose their dignity by too much familiarity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in suchan inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, theirabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lackof style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give usan impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements ofbeauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, thewhole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenlywe find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of theplay. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonderof the spectacle enthralls us.

Oscar Wilde

I don't think the intelligence reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of the New York Times.

John F. Kennedy

Well the themes for me were and remain sex and love and grief and death - the things that make us and undo us, create and destroy, how we breed and disappear and the emotional context that surrounds these events.

Thomas Lynch

Most people have a passive relationship with music and clothes, with culture. But music was my first contact with anything creative. Music is it, as far as I'm concerned.

Martin Freeman

Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists.

Joni Mitchell

My mother never breastfed me. She told me that she only liked me as a friend.

Rodney Dangerfield

Bullying is never fun, it's a cruel and terrible thing to do to someone. If you are being bullied, it is not your fault. No one deserves to be bullied, ever.

Raini Rodriguez

I like being a woman, even in a man's world. After all, men can't wear dresses, but we can wear the pants.

Whitney Houston

There is no index so sure as the voice.

Tancred

I've seen a lot of the United States, having stayed in so many different cities and towns for work. It's such a strange and fascinating country, and instead of learning about it through a textbook, I would rather discover its history and traditions and institutions through fiction and nonfiction writers.

Hope Davis

There is a camaraderie that grows up among those who work with old books and old papers, largely, I suspect, because we understand that we are at odds with the rest of the world: we are travelling backwards, while all those around us are still moving forward.

Peter Ackroyd