Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, -- whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.http://rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=173&Itemid=210

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

Robert A. Heinlein

Thinking will never be a waste of time, because it prevents you from wasting time in the future.

Vinh Khanh Huynh

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves they therefore remain bound.

James Allen

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Blaise Pascal

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

Oscar Wilde

People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of love. Anyone tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower on a field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of damp earth and the clouds on the horizon.

Paulo Coelho

My great hope would be that Quebec would realize itself fully as a distinct part of Canada, and stay Canadian, bringing to Canada a part of its richness.

Gabrielle Roy

Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could havemade me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

J.K. Rowling

Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.

Jodi Picoult

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.

Eric Hoffer

I started my cooking 'career' aged 15, almost 20 years ago. At the time it was quite a shock suddenly working 75 to 80 hours a week, without time to play football or other sports.

Rene Redzepi

To hate and to fear is the be psychologically ill... it is, in fact, the consuming illness of our time.

Harry A. Overstreet