With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

Mark Twain

I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!! What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

Edith Wharton

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering.

Jane Austen

Here comes February, a little girl with her first valentine, a red bow in her wind-blown hair, a kiss waiting on her lips, a tantrum just back of her laughter.

Hal Borland

I also pray for favor and His anointing on my life and ministry that I might have spiritual blessing when I minister to people. They're my principal prayers; I don't have a prayer list that I go down.

Pat Robertson

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

William Zinsser

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.

Victor Hugo

It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world.

Henry James Sumner Maine

A life without books is a thirsty life, and one without poetry is...like a life without pictures.

Stephen King

On the whole, lying is a cheerful affair. Embellishments are intended to give pleasure. People long to tell you what they imagine you want to hear. They want to amuse you; they want to amuse themselves; they want to show you a good time. This is beyond hospitality. This is art.

Isabel Fonseca

We're understanding what Obama is. He is the great teacher. He is this guy that stands above everybody. There's some condescension in it, but he stands above everybody and says, 'Now, listen. You people have to stop blaming each other unreasonably. You have to get along here and I am going to show you the way.' It is a pretty brave role in many ways.

Evan Thomas

News is history shot on the wing. The huntsmen from the Fourth Estate seek to bag only the peacock or the eagle of the swifting day.

Gene Fowler, Skyline, 1961