If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs.

My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

William Tecumseh Sherman

With the modern diseases (once TB, now cancer) the romantic idea that the disease expresses the character is invariably extended to assert that the character causes the disease -- because it has not expressed itself. Passion moves inward, striking and blighting the deepest cellular recesses.

Susan Sontag

There's no security on this earth, only opportunity.

General Douglas MacArthur

Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind it is a way of engaging reality.

Irving Howe

I've studied various schools of thought... I acknowledge that some Muslims consider music prohibited, but I've found a lot of evidence from the life of the Prophet to show that he allowed certainly, but even encouraged, music at certain times.

Cat Stevens

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

Kahlil Gibran

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Ellie Katz

It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.

Orson Scott Card

What more could he need, this old man whose little leisure was divided between day-time gardening and night-time contemplation? Was not that narrow space with the sky its ceiling room enough for the worship of God in the most delicate of his works and in the most sublime? A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in -what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.

Victor Hugo

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

Simone Weil

The wisdom and experience of older people is a resource of inestimable worth. Recognizing and treasuring the contributions of older people is essential to the long-term flourishing of any society.

Daisaku Ikeda

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

Oscar Wilde