Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment.

Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.

Iris Murdoch

If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

George Eliot

I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.

George Will

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Henry David Thoreau

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

C.S. Lewis

Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.

P. J. O'Rourke

If this liberal potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase. The problem is to spend up our rate of social invention in the service of the welfare of all the people.

Henry A. Wallace

Because religion has such a compelling hold on the deep psyches of so many people, feminists cannot afford to leave it in the hands of the fathers.

Carol P. Christ

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.

Doris Lessing

Well, you know when you're rocking in a rocking chair, and you go so far that you almost fall over backwards, but at the last instant you catch yourself? That's how I feel all the time.

Steven Wright

Your future is your own again. And I consider that to be a happy ending to the story.

Lisa Mangum

Jem is nothing but goodness. That he struck you last night only shows how capable you are of driving even saints to madness.

Cassandra Clare