In childhood's pride I said to Thee:O Thou, who mad'st me of Thy breath,Speak, Master, and reveal to meThine inmost laws of life and death.Give me to drink each joy and painWhich Thine eternal hand can mete,For my insatiate soul can drainEarth's utmost bitter, utmost sweet.Spare me no bliss, no pang of strife,Withhold no gift or grief I crave,The intricate lore of love and lifeAnd mystic knowledge of the grave.Lord, Thou didst answer stern and low:Child, I will hearken to thy prayer,And thy unconquered soul shall knowAll passionate rapture and despair.Thou shalt drink deep of joy and fame,And love shall burn thee like a fire,And pain shall cleanse thee like a flame,To purge the dross from thy desire.So shall thy chastened spirit yearnTo seek from its blind prayer release,And spent and pardoned, sue to learnThe simple secret of My peace.I, bending from my sevenfold height,Will teach thee of My quickening grace,Life is a prism of My light,And Death the shadow of My face.

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Comediennes are the lucky ones, because if you're funny, you can be 125 years old and they will still accept you.

Joan Rivers

Mitt Romney has never been resigned to what someone else said was possible. He cut his own path. That's why he believes in his heart that America has a future full of opportunity and hope. And that's why when Mitt Romney looks down the road, he sees a country that's ready for a comeback.

Mitch McConnell

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.

Carl Sandburg

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

Edmund Burke

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

Leo Tolstoy

The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no other material to make his people from than the people of his experience ... The only thing the writer can do is to recombine parts, suppress some characterisitics and emphasize others, put two or three people into one fictional character, and pray the real-life prototypes won't sue.

Wallace Stegner

The universe never did make sense. I suspect that it was built on a government contract.

Robert A. Heinlein

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

William Hazlitt

That the sea is one of the most beautiful and magnificent sights in Nature, all admit.

John Joly

Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives, and remembering what one receives.

Dumas The Younger

Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.

Stephen Swid