Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

David Lynch

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

Robert M. Pirsig

The bold are helpless without cleverness.

Euripides

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Thomas Jefferson

May I have a few friends and many books - both true.

A. Cowley

Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn --the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness.

Freya Stark

The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.

Joseph Addison

Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force.

Irving Berlin

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Ambrose Bierce

And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home.

Yo-Yo Ma

Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.

Benjamin Disraeli