Freedom cannot be given... It can only be taken away.

Though it is possible to utter words only with the intention to fulfill the will of God, it is very difficult not to think about the impression which they will produce on men and not to form them accordingly. But deeds you can do quite unknown to men, only for God. And such deeds are the greatest joy that a man can experience.

Leo Tolstoy

For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.

Charles Dickens

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

Elie Wiesel

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

Richard Russo

But the purpose of the book is not the horror, it is horror's defeat.

Terry Pratchett

Our lives improve only when we take chances -- and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.

Walter Anderson

If we would just support each other -- that's ninety percent of the problem.

Edward Gardner

Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value.

Jean Cocteau

Only when I fall do I get up again.

Vincent Van Gogh

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

Henry Ward Beecher

God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools let them use their talents

William Shakespeare

I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.

James Russell Lowell