In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents. They are deprived of their independence. Democratic politicians rarely feel they can afford the luxury of telling the whole truth to the people. And since not telling it, though prudent, is uncomfortable, they find it easier if they themselves do not have to hear too often too much of the sour truth. The men under them who report and collect the news come to realize in their turn that it is safer to be wrong before it has become fashionable to be right.

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.

Thomas Jefferson

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.

Roger Caras

There is strong shadow where there is much light.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

Charles Lamb

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

Neil Gaiman

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.These laid the world away; poured out the redSweet wine of youth; gave up the years to beOf work and joy, and that unhoped serene,That men call age; and those who would have been,Their sons, they gave, their immortality.Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,And paid his subjects with a royal wage;And Nobleness walks in our ways again;And we have come into our heritage.

Rupert Brooke, The Dead

You don't want to be in a relationship with someone who's scared of you.

Tila Tequila

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

Thomas Szasz

Don't forget to love yourself.

Soren Kierkegaard

It's better to be in love than to watch it.

Matt Dugan

[T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.

Christopher Hitchens

After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.

Evelyn Waugh