Being funny, it turns out, is like being a bank. It's a confidence trick. As long as everyone believes in you, you are fine.

The most solid stone in the structure is the lowest one in the foundation.

Kahlil Gibran

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

Petrarch

I think the first duty of society is justice.

Alexander Hamilton

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

Isaac Asimov

We do not judge the people we love.

Jean-Paul Sartre

What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

C.S. Lewis

From Les Miserables:All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accent of children, -- voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom.Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel.These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.

Victor Hugo

[D]on't ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...

Neil Gaiman

When did it become a problem to be a small businessman and become successful? The small businessman - like my father, or like me?

Glenn Beck

It is the growling man who lives a dog's life.

Coleman Cox

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

Henry David Thoreau

One day I went up to my mom and I said, 'Mom, can I have permission to build a 2.3-million electron-volt atom smasher - a betatron - in the garage?' And my mom stared at me, and she said, 'Sure. Why not? And don't forget to take out the garbage.'

Michio Kaku