I especially object to having my character assassinated by reference to events from my past which bear absolutely no relationship to the question of who the anthrax killer is.

The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.

C.S. Lewis

Even crushed against his brother in the Tube the average Englishman pretends desperately that he is alone.

Germaine Greer

Normal life cannot sustain revolutionary attitudes for long.

Milovan Djilas

There is a vast difference in some instances between what we really need and that which we think we must have, and the realization of this truth will greatly lessen the seeming discomfort in doing without.

William M. Peck

I wake up in the morning, I do a little stretching exercises, pick up the horn and play.

Herb Alpert

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.Cavendum est ne major poena quam culpa sit; et ne issdem de causis alii plectantur,alii ne appellentur quidem.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, De offici

We take for granted the need to escape the self. Yet the self can also be a refuge. In totalitarian countries the great hunger is for private life. Absorption in the minutiae of an individual existence is the only refuge from the apocalyptic madhouse staged by maniacal saviors of humanity.

Eric Hoffer

I'm no good, Teddy. Let's run away! You're a very good boy. Your Mummy loves you. Slowly, he shook his head. If she loved me, then why can't I talk to her? You're being silly, David. Mummy's lonely. That's why she had you. She's got Daddy. I've got nobody 'cept you, and I'm lonely.

Brian Aldiss

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

Abraham Lincoln

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Thomas Carlyle

I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided b

George Washington

However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, orcomplain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn'tthis be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who willnever even be offered life in the first place?

Richard Dawkins