The great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

The reason I met my husband was because I remembered a friend's birthday. The moral of the story is: Remember people's birthdays.

Julianna Margulies

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. We know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relation to our fellow-men. The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation. It means that we at once fall into the worst blunders of our opponents. The man who despises another will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about man and his frailty and temptability? We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. The only profitable relationship to others -- and especially to our weaker brethren -- is one of love, and that means the will to hold fellowship with them. God himself did not despise humanity, but became man for men's sake.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and

The frontiers of knowledge in the various fields of our subject are expanding at such a rate that, work as hard as one can, one finds oneself further and further away from an understanding of the whole.

James Meade

It wasn't always easy getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning to go to the rink. Sometimes I wanted to just go back to sleep.

Nancy Kerrigan

Eat not garlic nor onions, lest they find out thy boorish origin by the smell; walk slowly and speak deliberately, but not in such a way as to make it seem thou art listening to thyself, for all affectation is bad. Dine sparingly and sup more sparingly still; for the health of the whole body is forged in the workshop of the stomach. Be temperate in drinking, bearing in mind that wine in excess keeps neither secrets nor promises. Take care, Sancho, not to chew on both sides, and not to eruct in anybody's presence.Eruct! said Sancho; I don't know what that means.To eruct, Sancho, said Don Quixote, means to belch, and that is one of the filthiest words in the Spanish language, though a very expressive one; and therefore nice folk have had recourse to the Latin, and instead of belch say eruct, and instead of belches say eructations; and if some do not understand these terms it matters little, for custom will bring them into use in the course of time, so that they will be readily understood; this is the way a language is enriched; custom and the public are all-powerful there.In truth, senor, said Sancho, one of the counsels and cautions I mean to bear in mind shall be this, not to belch, for I'm constantly doing it.Eruct, Sancho, not belch, said Don Quixote.Eruct, I shall say henceforth, and I swear not to forget it, said Sancho.

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

The Victorian Age, for all its humbug, was a period of rapid progress, because men were dominated by hope rather than fear. If we are again to have progress, we must again be dominated by hope.

Bertrand Russell

It's not about what you've done; it's how you've experienced whatever has happened to you. Matt Lawrence in The Overachievers

Alexandra Robbins

Can you also, Lucullus, affirm that there is any power united with wisdom and prudence which has made, or, to use your own expression, manufactured man? What sort of a manufacture is that? Where is it exercised? when? why? how?

Cicero

But I don't begrudge anybody, because I know how hard it is to have that dream and to make it happen, whether or not it's just to put a roof over your head and food on the table.

Carol Burnett

Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's a valid part of any endeavour, not just writing.

Roddy Doyle

To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune to lose both looks like carelessness.

Oscar Wilde