Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.

D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own business; but to these we must add frugality if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a grout at last.

Benjamin Franklin

Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.

Jared Diamond

When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.

Jimi Hendrix

The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.

H. L. Mencken

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

Irwin Shaw

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Voltaire

His love at once and dread instruct our thought; As man He suffer'd and as God He taught.

Edmund Waller

He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much.

LaoTzu

When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day.

Alberto Moravia

Not only does travel give us a new system of reckoning, it also brings to the fore unknown aspects of our own self. Our consciousness being broadened and enriched, we shall judge ourselves more correctly.

Ella Maillart

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.

Henry Bolingbroke