Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

Why should your majesty think it? My own plans are made. While I may, I sail East in Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I row East in my coracle. When that sinks, shall I paddle East with my four paws. Then, when I can swim no longer, if I have not yet reached Aslan's Country, there shall I sink with my nose to the sunrise...and Peepiceek will be head of Talking Mice in Narnia

C.S. Lewis

So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was. That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such a professional way, as if there ever is a reflection, it's a positive one.

Sidney Poitier

The labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process.

Mary McCarthy

The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.

Matthew Arnold

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

John Dewey

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Mark Twain

I keep both eyes on my man. The basket hasn't moved on me yet.

Julius Erving

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.

Samuel Butler

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

Charlie Chaplin

It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge.

Samuel Johnson

As it can be maintained that all the great advances have come from men under forty, so the history of the world shows that a very large proportion of the evils may be traced to the sexagenarians, nearly all the great mistakes politically and socially, all of the worst poems, most of the bad pictures, a majority of the bad novels and not a few of the bad sermons and speeches.

William Osler

There's so much proscription in the lives of young people, and it's so vital to have a place that says, look, here are the doors onto the world and amazingly, you're free to choose any one you like. - Patrick Ness on Libraries

Patrick Ness