Confusing the words wish, faith and pray with each other usually just results in a minor grammatical faux pas, but when any of these words, especially hope, is confused with action, the results are much more devastating.

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent -- for every effect a perfect cause -- and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

George Bernard Shaw

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

Francis Bacon

I never had the high-paying job or the company car. It took me over a decade to pay off my student loans. I never had to worry about where to dock my yacht to reduce my taxes.

Christine O'Donnell

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Samuel Johnson

Dad, I'm in some trouble. There's been an accident and you're going to hear all sorts of things about me from now on. Terrible things.

Edward Kennedy

How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.

William Wordsworth

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

G. K. Chesterton

A lot of people put pressure on themselves and think it will be way too hard for them to live out their dreams. Mentors are there to say, 'Look, it's not that tough. It's not as hard as you think. Here are some guidelines and things I have gone through to get to where I am in my career.'

Joe Jonas

My life has been nothing but a failure.

Claude Monet

The borders of my bodyhood coincide with those of my openness to the world. They are in fact at any given time identical, though they are always changing with the fluid expansion and contraction of my relationships to the world.

Medard Boss

I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind. Health to the ocean means health for us.

Sylvia Earle