It came to Mary now that her mother had been right, after all; Mary had been born for this. In sixteen years she'd shot along the shortest route she could find between life and death, as the crow flew.

The number of those who have nothing to recommend them and of those in whom nothing but good can be found is probably equal

Lady Murasaki Shikibu

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

H. L. Mencken

If it's not working before you get married, marriage isn't going to fix it.

Courtney Thorne Smith

Thoughts are things; they have tremendous power. Thoughts of doubt and fear are pathways to failure. When you conquer negative attitudes of doubt and fear you conquer failure. Thoughts crystallize into habit and habit solidifies into circumstances.

Bryan Adams

When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.

Warren Farrell

You can be much more alone with other people than you are by yourself. Even if it's people you love.

Philip Dunne

The world could not long ignore a holy church. The church is not despised because it is holy: it is despised because it is not holy enough. There is not enough difference between the people inside the church and those outside to be impressive. A church in which saints were as common as now they are rare would convict the world, if only by contrast. Sanctity cannot be ignored. Even a little bit is potent. So far from the gates of hell prevailing against it, it hammers on their triple steel.

W.E. (William Edwin) Sangster, T

My experiences of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor be indisposed to serve them: nor, in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.

General Robert E. Lee, letter to

Well, I believe that the depth of your struggle can determine the height of your success. I was inspired to come out of everything I've been through and end up in a place where I never thought that I would be.

R. Kelly

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Plutarch