The business of being happy requires making a conscious choice. People think being happy will just happen to them someday, if only they do this or that right. But it doesn't - you have to choose it. You choose happiness, you don't wait for it to choose you.

Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.

Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Va

Knowledge exists to be imparted.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's so warm now, and Thanksgiving came so early - is it just me, or does it not really feel like Ramadan?

David Letterman

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead

Mark Twain

Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut Animals up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph... Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

In a higher phase of communist society... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Karl Marx

People more than ever since I can remember are concerned about being out of step and out of line with their political party and won't cross over. There is nobody, man or woman, who wants to be left out, and people are fearful of that. People are fearful of their leadership as well.

Gary Ackerman

The town, the team, it's a family. That has helped. For some people who have had to deal with some of the problems I have had to deal with don't have football as an out.

Brett Favre

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

Seneca (Seneca the Elder)

The devil had as good have let Paul alone, for he no sooner comes into prison but he falls a preaching, at which the gates of Satan's prison fly open, and poor sinners come forth.

William Gurnall

Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.

Alban Berg

I get stubborn and dig in when people tell me I can't do something and I think I can. It goes back to my childhood when I had problems in school because I have a learning disability.

Ann Bancroft