I come from a stupid family. During the Civil War my great Uncle fought for the west!

Troubles impending always seem worse than troubles surmounted, but this does not prove that they really are.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

On completely popular government: Its superiority in reference to present well-being rests upon two principles, of as universal truth and applicability as any general propositions which can be laid down respecting human affairs. The first is, that the rights and interests of every or any person are only secure from being disregarded, when the person interested is himself able, and habitually disposed, to stand up for them. The second is, that the general prosperity attains a greater height, and is more widely diffused, in proportion to the amount and variety of the personal energies enlisted in promoting it.

John Stuart Mill

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

Gaston Bachelard

Feeling indifferent or reserved about doing something is a signal that it is probably not correct after all.

Stephen Richards

The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation. At all costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that mood; we ought to scout it in ourselves and others, and never show it tolerance.

William James

Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.

E.B. (Elwyn Brooks) White

He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.

Leo Tolstoy

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

Plato

Without passion you don't have energy, with out energy you have nothing.

Donald Trump

The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

Jean Cocteau

Love to me is a feeling, to have universal love you have to always feel love no matter what.

James Dye

We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.

John Locke