After dinner Natasha went to the clavichord, at Prince Andrey's request, and began singing. Prince Andrey stood at the window, talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the middle of a phrase, Prince Andrey ceased speaking, and felt suddenly a lump in his throat from tears, the possibility of which he had never dreamed of in himself. He looked at Natasha singing, and something new and blissful stirred in his soul. He was happy, and at the same time he was sad. He certainly had nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. For what? For his past love? For the little princess? For his lost illusions? For his hopes for the future? Yes, and no. The chief thing which made him ready to weep was a sudden, vivid sense of the fearful contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing in him, and something limited and material, which he himself was, and even she was. This contrast made his heart ache, and rejoiced him while she was singing.

Cultivate only the habits that you are willing should master you.

Elbert Hubbard

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

Karl Marx

If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.

Blaise Pascal

No man sees far, most see no farther than their noses.

Thomas Carlyle

The highest in God's esteem are the lowest in their own.

Thomas Kempis

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

Oscar Wilde

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion

Albert Camus

I had a lot of pimples too. One day I fell asleep in a library. I woke up and a blind man was reading my face.

Rodney Dangerfield

I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive.

Tim Allen

The negative cost of Lewis and Clark entering the Garden of Eden is that later expeditions regardless of what they were intended to do, later expeditions did not deal with the native peoples with the intelligence with the almost kindly resolve that Lewis and Clark did.

William Least Heat-Moon

I will listen to a beautiful person much more quickly than a plain person, and I have to learn to be nice to people who are not attractive looking.

Beatrice Wood