If there is dissatisfaction with the status quo, good. If there is ferment, so much the better. If there is restlessness, I am pleased. Then let there be ideas, and hard thought, and hard work. If man feels small, let man make himself bigger.

The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing

Blaise Pascal

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.

Alphonse de Lamartine

To read the papers and to listen to the news... one would think the country is in terrible trouble. You do not get that impression when you travel the back roads and the small towns do care about their country and wish it well.

Charles Kuralt

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Car

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.

Edsger Dijkstra

Great art picks up where nature ends.

Marc Chagall

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Henry David Thoreau

I hate... I hate when you die. It destroys me. I know i have no right to be so upset, because I'm not the one losing my life, but it breaks me apart inside. I'm not very good with words, and i dont know how to explain to you how i feel. I get lonely when you aren't with me. I miss you. And every time you die, a little piece of me dies with you.

Courtney Allison Moulton

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

George Eliot

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

William Wordsworth

I am opposed to anybody making a decision for you or me or anybody else about what health care plan we should have.

Arlen Specter

Honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.

Shakespeare, William