Our concern must be to live while we're alive... to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.

In the corrupted currents of this word offence's gilded hand may solve by justice, and oft, tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law: but 'tis not so above; There is no shuffling, there the action lies in his true nature; And we ourselves

William Shakespeare

Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to go off and amuse himself conquering the world. Such a pastime was all right for Augustus and Alexander; they were young men, not easily held in check, but Caesar ought to have been more mature.

Blaise Pascal

The child is the father of the man.

William Wordsworth

Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm.

Terry Eagleton

For they conquer who believe they can.

John Dryden

Traveling is seeing it is the implicit that we travel by.

Cynthia Ozick

Oh seek, my love, your newer way; I'll not be left in sorrow. So long as I have yesterday Go take your damned tomorrow!

Dorothy Parker, Godspeed

A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured.

Henry David Thoreau

If there were no flowers earth would be populated by men and lesbians.

Jerry Seinfeld

It is a bore, I admit, to be past seventy, for you are left for execution, and are daily expecting the death-warrant; but it is not anything very capital we quit. We are, at the close of life, only hurried away from stomach-aches, pains in the joints, from sleepless nights and unamusing days, from weakness, ugliness, and nervous tremors; but we shall all meet again in another planet, cured of all our defects.

Sydney Smith

Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.

John Ruskin

The worst part about celebrating another birthday is the shock that you're only as well as you are.

Anne Lamott