By concentrating our attention on the effect rather than the causes, we can avoid the laborious, nearly impossible task of trying to detect and deflect the many psychological influences on liking.

I had grown a thin mustache, I was a full-grown man, and yet I was completely helpless and without a goal in life.

Hermann Hesse

It is almost as if you were frantically constructing another world while the world that you live in dissolves beneath your feet, and that your survival depends on completing this construction at least one second before the old habitation collapses.

Tennessee (Thomas Lanier) Willia

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

Thomas Paine

As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.

Marina Lewycka

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety

Samuel Johnson

No matter how popular you are as a stand-up - you can go out and fill a 10,000-seat arena and be smart and funny - it's delicate to host an awards show and know where your place is and know that it's not about you, that it's about the people who are nominated, and respect that, but at the same time have your moment to show them who you are.

Ellen DeGeneres

A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive.

Pearl Bailey

There is convincing evidence that the search for solitude is not a luxury but a biological need. Just as humans posses a herding instinct that keeps us close to others most of the time, we also have a conflicting drive to seek out solitude. If the distance between ourselves and others becomes too great, we experience isolation and alienation, yet if the proximity to others becomes too close, we feel smothered and trapped.

Jeffrey Kottler

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.

Nicholas D. Kristof

Fine writers should split hairs together, and sit side by side, like friendly apes, to pick the fleas from each others fur.

Logan Pearsall Smith

The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out.

Lance Morrow