Each cloud-capt mountain is a holy altar; An organ breathes in every grove; And the full heart 's a Psalter, Rich in deep hymn of gratitude and love.

The big journals and Nobel laureates are the equivalent of Congressional leaders in science journalism.

Michael Pollan

It's a great excuse and luxury, having a job and blaming it for your inability to do your own art. When you don't have to work, you are left with the horror of facing your own lack of imagination and your own emptiness. A devastating possibility when finally time is your own.

Julian Schnabel

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

Henry David Thoreau

Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.

Marilyn Ferguson

A devotee who can call on God while living a householder's life is a hero indeed. God thinks: 'He is blessed indeed who prays to me in the midst of his worldly duties. He is trying to find me, overcoming a great obstacle -- pushing away, as it were, a huge block of stone weighing a ton. Such a man is a real hero.'

Sri Ramakrishna

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means -- except by getting off his back.

Leo Tolstoy

Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains, rivers, plants and trees - should be your teacher.

Morihei Ueshiba

'Tis an old saying, the Devil lurks behind the cross. All is not gold that glitters. From the tail of the plough, Bamba was made King of Spain; and from his silks and riches was Rodrigo cast to be devoured by the snakes.

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

It doesn't matter who my father was it matters who I remember he was.

Anne Sexton

Yale is a crucible in American life for the accommodation of intellectual achievement, of wisdom, of refinement, with the democratic ideals of openness, of social justice and of equal opportunity.

Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

Physicists know what's important, but they don't know what is true. Mathematicians know what's true, but they don't know what is important.

Source Unknown

Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are 'fashionable,' it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation.

Christopher Hitchens