Dignity is a mask we wear to hide our ignorance.

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We spend so much time creating a façade of what we want to project to the world, we almost forget what we ourselves are truly about in the process.

Jason R. Thrift

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

Mary Oliver

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Marc Chagall

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

Sigmund Freud

...by association with natures enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the 'Big Man' described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China's first romanticists, we 'live in heaven and earth as our house.'

Lin Yutang, The Importance of Li

No sooner said than done -- so acts your man of worth.

Quintus Ennius

I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap.

Margaret Spellings

He who would travel happily must travel light

Antoine De SaintExupery

I knew I wanted to do something at the nexus of what I call global development and technology.

Chris Hughes

No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life.

Ernest Renan

Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him.

English Proverb