Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things - with resignations, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope.

The finest fury is the most controlled.

Christopher Hitchens

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

Ayn Rand

Parvati positively beamed. Harry could tell that she was feeling guilty for having laughed at Hermione in Transfiguration. He looked around and saw that Hermione was beaming back, if possible even more brightly. Girls were very strange sometimes.

J.K. Rowling

A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles.

George Bernard Shaw

Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life.

Louis Auchincloss

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

George Bernard Shaw

Those who scorn you taunt only themselves -- I knew this without reading one word; because in reading one is reminded of the truth man is given at birth -- by man I mean man and woman.

David Adams Richards

Since I had the baby I can't tolerate anything violent or sad, I saw the Matrix and I had my eyes closed through a lot of it, though I didn't need to. I would peek, and then think, oh OK, I can see that.

Lisa Kudrow

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art.

Anne Stevenson

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

Thomas Carlyle

For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational.

Herbert Simon