He was, first and last, the born fighter, to whom the consciousness of being matched against a great adversary suffices and who can dispense with success. Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.

Samuel Johnson

What you can't get out of, get into wholeheartedly.

Mignon McLaughlin

It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.

Napoleon Bonaparte

They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.

Kate Atkinson

Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.

Thomas Hardy

If we don't bear witness as citizens, as people, as individuals, the right that we have had to life is sacrificed. There is a silence, instead of a speaking presence.

Jane Rule

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

Abraham Lincoln

The worst nightmare I ever had about Vietnam was that I had to go back. I woke up in a sweat, in total terror.

Oliver Stone

Youth can not know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

J.K. Rowling

Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.

Vincent Van Gogh

The sensitiveness claimed by neurotic is matched by their egotism: they cannot abide the flaunting by others of the sufferings to which they pay an even increasing amount of attention in themselves.

Marcel Proust

Poetry does not consist of words alone there must be sentiment and fancy, combination and arrangement.

Samuel Prout