My dad sold encyclopedias and my mom worked in a factory office.

...He made no complaint whatsoever about the bad reputation he had attracted throughout the world, assured me that he himself was the person most concerned by the destruction of superstition, and admitted to me that as far as his own power was concerned he had been afraid on only one occasion, which was when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than his colleagues, shout out from the pulpit: 'Dearly beloved, never forget, when you hear anyone vaunt the progress of enlightenment, that the Devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist!'

Charles Baudelaire, The Generous

If the grandfather of the grandfather of Jesus had known what was hidden within him, he would have stood humble and awe-struck before his soul.

Khalil Gibran

The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.

Vanna Bonta

All around me new love and it makes me sad. All around me feel assured that you'll be back, if I imagine you, body next to another.

Tegan Quin

You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it's like to be up there amongst the stars. And I always look up at the moon and see it as the single most romantic place within the cosmos.

Tom Hanks

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

Salman Rushdie

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

Mark Twain

I think I'm extremely vulnerable and that in some ways I seek out rejection. Never feeling like you're getting that pat on the back from dad is probably at the heart of that.

Skeet Ulrich

Prier Dieu c'est se flatter qu'avec des paroles on changera toute la nature.

Voltaire

It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

Dale Carnegie

Power is not a means; it is an end....Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself....The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy - everything.... No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends....We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science.... There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always - do not forget this, Winston - always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless....If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

George Orwell, 1984

Sarcasm spoils reproof.

E. Wigglesworh