We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.

To hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don't want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other.

Roland Barthes

Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints --the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk --we think we're using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we're its slavish agents.

Harry Mathews

Although Golf was originally restricted to wealthy Protestants, today its open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

Dave Barry

Many hands make light work.

John Heywood

Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one.

Daley Thompson

A smile cures the wounding of a frown.

William Shakespeare

The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.

George E. Mueller

Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.

Kurt Vonnegut

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

Phoebe Cary

I'm very particular about the kind of music that I record and sing, and it would be the same way about the kind of movies that I would do.

Jason Aldean

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

Ernest Hemingway

Of the 55 refineries closed in America in the last 10 years, they were all closed for economic reasons, mostly oil company mergers. Not a single one was closed for environmental purposes or objections.

Peter DeFazio