I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

Mona Caird

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.

C.S. Lewis

I spent two years in the Army. And my older brother, who was also a great positive influence on me, encouraged me to think about law school, and I said - well, I didn't have any money.

George J. Mitchell

Hell is paved with great granite blocks hewn from the hearts of those who said, I can do no other.

Heywood Broun

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.

Buddha

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

Karl Marx

England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.

George Orwell

I get curious about new things. My real strength is going into a field that has not been investigated before, and finding new approaches to it.

Joshua Lederberg

Although human subtlety makes a variety of inventions by different means to the same end, it will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple, or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

Leonardo DaVinci

Sometimes, in a summer morning,having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrisetill noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around orflitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in atmy west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distanthighway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasonslike corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of thehands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, butso much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientalsmean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, Iminded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light somework of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothingmemorable is accomplished.

Henry David Thoreau

Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided.

Philipus A. Paracelsus