Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.

He splashed into the water, his whole body, not with the reverent attitude of prayer, but with a desperate thirst; he buried his head under the water and drank deep, with his cheek against the cold stone of the riverbed, the water tumbling over his back, his calves. He drank and drank, lifted his head and shoulders above the water to gasp in the evening air, and then collapsed into the water again, to drink as greedily as before.It was a kind of prayer, though, he realized as he emerged, freezing cold as the water evaporated from his skin in the breeze of the dark morning.I am with you, he said to the Oversoul. I'll do whatever you ask, because I long for you to accomplish your purpose here.

Orson Scott Card

When a subject is highly controversial... one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.

Virginia Woolf

Science has always been too dignified to invent a good backscratcher.

Don Marquis

Nowadays, a penny saved is ridiculous!

Shelby Friedman

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

Confucius

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

The phrase 'the fossil record' sounds impressive and authoritative. As used by some persons it becomes, as intended, intimidating, taking on the aura of esoteric truth as expounded by an elite class of specialists. But what is it, really, this fossil record? Only data in search of interpretation. All claims to the contrary that I know, and I know of several, are so much superstition.

Gareth J. Nelson

It's something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you're too awkward to do it.

John Cusack

Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell.

Lord Byron

There are two sorts of romantics: those who love, and those who love the adventure of loving

Lesley Blanch

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

George Washington

No one can learn to love by following a manual, and no one can learn to write by following a course. I'm not telling you to seek out other writers but to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm.

Paulo Coelho