The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

Here closed in death th' attentive eyes That saw the manners in the face.

Samuel Johnson

What happened was very sad. Mr. Lacey told the staff that he was disappointed and appalled that the front of the book was all commentary and that he wanted hard news.

Sydney Schanberg

I didn't think past the first step of anything, that was the key. I drank a Coke and didn't worry about how to recycle the can or about the acid puddling in my belly, acid so powerful it could strip clean a penny. We went to a dumb movie and I didn't worry about the offensive sexism or the lack of minorities in meaningful roles. I didn't even worry about anything that came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feel myself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy.

Gillian Flynn

An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.

Roald Dahl

All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Paul Simon

They Young People have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.

Aristotle

It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself included, that we should attempt to achieve a unification of Chomsky's syntax, with the results of the researches that were going on in semantics and pragmatics. I believe that this effort has proven to be a failure. Though Chomsky did indeed revolutionize the subject of linguistics, it is not at all clear, at the end the century, what the solid results of this revolution are. As far as I can tell there is not a single rule of syntax that all, or even most, competent linguists are prepared to agree is a rule.

John Searle

Some people talk of Africa being a continent cursed not blessed with minerals, but the real curse is the leaders and politicians of Africa

Peter Mutanda

Lives are not stories. A day, a month, a year, or a lifetime has no plot. Our experiences are only the raw stuff of stories. The beginnings of our lives are arbitrary; usually their endings come too soon or too late for any neat narrative conclusions.We turn our lives into stories, and, in doing so, we can stop them where we choose. Our stories do in a small way what memoirs and autobiographies do on a grander scale: they allow a self-fashioning that gives remembered lives a coherence that the day-to-day lives of actual experience lack. History, of course, also imposes coherence, but the historian works will less malleable stuff than memory. Memoirs are seamless; good histories disrupt.

Richard White, Remembering Ahana

My father was Catholic, my mother was Protestant, and because of that I got Christened in both churches, so I've got all these names... but my Dad always called me Mick.

Mickey Spillane

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

Thomas A. Edison

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

Mary McCarthy