Character is a victory, not a gift.

No evil is without its compensation. The less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy. Even in those cases which put us out of wits, it is not the loss itself, but the estimate of the loss that troubles us.

Seneca (Seneca the Elder)

At my age you don't go into fatherhood lightly.

Rod Stewart

Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing.

Thomas Fuller

Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.

Peter Drucker

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round -- for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost -- do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as be awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, ch.

she might have been pretty when she started out, but the world had moved on since then.

Stephen King

'Men have forgotten this truth,' said the fox. 'But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.'

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Life has two choices: create or destruct. These choices are the backbone for all, within oneself and outside oneself. Too many ways of thinking are described by too many people that have no idea. If you're attached to your ways then detach, so you can change. Use this detachment in your writing, relationships, and understanding of life. Our future as individuals, as nations, and as mankind can only go one way. It's our choice whether we want the painful path or the peaceful path.

Mark O'Brien

One of the strangest things about life is that the poor, who need the money the most, are the ones that never have it.

Finley Peter Dunne

How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things.

Elaine Scarry

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

Henry David Thoreau

Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Vince Lombardi