To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

John F. Kennedy

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

Henry Ward Beecher

Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history, people would gather around, whether by the fire or at a tavern, and tell stories. One person would chime in, then another, maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It's a collective process.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I once knew a girl In the years of my youth With eyes like the summer All beauty and truth In the morning I fled Left a note and it read Someday you will be loved.

Ben Gibbard

I wanted to be the first woman to burn her bra, but it would have taken the fire department four days to put it out.

Dolly Parton

For the past several years, I have remained what others would consider underground. I did this in order to build a community of people, like-minded in their desire for freedom and the right to pursue their goals and lives without being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex with a completely different agenda.

Lauryn Hill

When I was a kid, my mom used to run the vacuum cleaner, and the noise would bother me so much that I would run into the woods to calm down. I feel like that vacuum cleaner has been on since I moved to New York City.

Steve Burns

Pride is seldom delicate, it will please itself with very mean advantages; and envy feels not its own happiness, but when it may be compared with the misery of others

Samuel Johnson

I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends' houses. I like places where there's stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

James Madison, The Federalist (n

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.

George Washington