Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.

The dreariest spot in all the land to Death they set apart; with scanty grace from Nature's hand, and none from that of Art.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Women know the way to rear up children (to be just). They know a simple, merry, tender knack of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, and stringing pretty words that make no sense. And kissing full sense into empty words.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

John Adams

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, the right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. Those are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.

Samuel Adams

I've had dreams about tricks.

Shaun White

Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?

George Bernard Shaw

We had four years of world war which the peoples endured only because they were told that their sufferings would free humanity forever from the scourge of war.

Arthur Henderson

Anyway, it's like with bikes,' said the first speaker authoritatively. 'I thought I was going to get this bike with seven gears and one of them razorblade saddles and purple paint and everything, and they gave me this light blue one. With a basket. A girl's bike.''Well. You're a girl,' said one of the others.'That's sexism, that is. Going around giving people girly presents just because they're a girl.

Terry Pratchett

I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life.

Jonathan Swift

Aristocracy has three successive ages. First superiority s, then privileges and finally vanities. Having passed from the first, it degenerates in the second and dies in the third.

Vicomte De Chateaubriand

If I could set a world record, it would be that I have 150 business partners, all with thriving businesses of their own that started with nothing and I made the difference to make them all billionaires.

Barbara Corcoran

Hold yourself to a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

Henry Ward Beecher