The emancipation of women is practically the greatest egoistic movement of the nineteenth century, and the most intense affirmation of the right of the self that history has yet seen.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.

Oscar Wilde

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.

Robert Louis Stevenson

There is always the question why And there is always life, Which doesn't need an answer.

Dejan Stojanovic

Our desire to say more grows bigger and what to say about it, except that saying is not always about saying, growing is not always about growing.

Dejan Stojanovic

Ere to sleepThou liest down, prepare to guard thy life--A man is friendless in the hour of trial. . . .I to the needy gave, the orphan nourished,Esteemed alike the lowly and the great;But he who ate my bread made insurrection,And those my hands raised up, occasion seizedRebellion to create. . . . They went aboutAll uniformed in garments that I gaveAnd deemed me but a shadow. . . . Those who sharedMy perfumes for anointment, rose betimesAnd broke into my harem.

The Instruction of Amenemhet

Although I may not be a lioness, I am a lion's cub, and inherit many of his qualities; and as long as the King of France treats me gently he will find me as gentle and tractable as he can desire; but if he be rough, I shall take the trouble to be just as troublesome and offensive to him as I can.

Elizabeth I

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

Jonathan Swift

I noticed recently, in the last few shows I did, that I'm starting to get people - not a large group, but quite a few people - who come to see me because they love Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Wanda Sykes

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few.

Benjamin Franklin

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

Mark Twain

Each night when she prepared for bed she smeared her face with some new unguent which she hoped illogically would give back the glow and freshness to her vanishing beauty.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Like sheep which, having been driven to a pasture, can now spread out at their leisure, the clouds began to drift. Afternoon sunlight sliced through into the still waters. The boomerang hung in the sky, and the boy thought he would have to find a new word for the way the colours glowed. In the meantime, he looked down at the water and tried out the word he'd been taught by his grandfather, who'd been taught it by grandfather, and which had been kept for thousands of years for when it would been needed. It meant . It had, he thought, been well worth waiting for.

Terry Pratchett