We find nothing easier than being wise, patient, superior. We drip with the oil of forbearance and sympathy, we are absurdly just, we forgive everything. For that very reason we ought to discipline ourselves a little; for that very reason we ought to cultivate a little emotion, a little emotional vice, from time to time. It may be hard for us; and among ourselves we may perhaps laugh at the appearance we thus present. But what of that! We no longer have any other mode of self-overcoming available to us: this is our asceticism, our penance.

Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.

Ben Hecht

We must select the Illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy.

Cyril Connolly

Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?

Bill Watterson

I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.

Oliver Goldsmith

My dad said, 'The thing that I was told that was really helpful was that I mustn't be afraid of the things I was afraid of when I was five years old'. The shock of his childhood had put him in this defensive crouch against the world, and he needed to know that he had a nice wife and kids and it wasn't the same any more.

Tom Hooper

I never saw film stars at home. We had no maid, no cook, no swimming pool.

Natalie Wood

Visit not miracle-mongers and those who exhibit occult powers. These men are stragglers from the path of Truth. Their minds have become entangled in psychic powers, which are like veritable meshes in the way of the pilgrim to Brahman. Beware of these powers, and desire them not.

Ramakrishna

There is no Gain in the world: so be it: but neither is there any Loss. There is never any failure to this infinite freshness of life, and the ancient novelty is forever renewed. We realize the world better if we imagine it, not as a Progress to Prim Perfection, but as the sustained upleaping of a Fountain, the pillar of a Glorious Flame. For, after all, we cannot go beyond the ancient image of Heraclitus, the Ever-living Flame, kindled in due measure and in the like measure extinguished. That translucent and mysterious Flame shines undyingly before our eyes, never for two moments the same, and always miraculously incalculable, an ever-flowing stream of fire. The world is moving, men tell us, to this, to that, to the other. Do not believe them! Men have never known what the world is moving to. Who foresaw--to say nothing of older and vaster events--the Crucifixion? What Greek or Roman in his most fantastic moments prefigured our thirteenth century? What Christian foresaw the Renaissance? Who ever really expected the French Revolution? We cannot be too bold, for we are ever at the incipient point of some new manifestation far more overwhelming than all our dreams. No one can foresee the next aspect of the Fountain of Life. And all the time the Pillar of that Flame is burning at exactly the same height it has always been burning at! The World is everlasting Novelty, everlasting Monotony. It is just which aspect you prefer. You will always be right.

Havelock Ellis, Impressions and

Sufficient to each day are the duties to be done and the trials to be endured. God never built a Christian strong enough to carry today's duties and tomorrow's anxieties piled on the top of them.

Theodore L. Cuyler

In the one branch he most needed

Henry Adams, The Education of He

Life is like the ocean, it goes up and down.

Vanessa Paradis

Happiness is spiritual, born of truth and love. It is unselfish therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it.

Mary Baker Eddy