Happiness consists in activity. It is running steam, not a stagnant pool.

Be not deceived with the first appearance of things, for show is not substance.

English Proverb

Few men are of one plain, decided color; most are mixed, shaded or blended; and vary as much from different situations, as changeable silks do from different lights.

Philip Dormer Stanhope

In the only sense that matters the surprise works as well the twentieth time as the first. It is the quality of unexpectedness, not the fact that delights us. It is even better the second time. Knowing that the 'surprise' is coming we can now fully relish the fact that this path through the shrubbery doesn't look as if it were suddenly going to bring us out on the edge of the cliff. So in literature. We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we are leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness. The children understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the 'surprise' of discovering that what seemed Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother is really the wolf. It is better when you know it is coming: free from the shock of actual surprise you can attend better to the intrinsic surprisingness of the peripeteia.

C.S. Lewis

She used to diet on any kind of food she could lay her hands on.

Arthur Baer

If you're a Christian you don't sit there and worry about what somebody else is doing, if they're happy and they're committed in a relationship.

Howard Stern

It's always sad if anybody you know has a personal problem.

Lee Child

I just think we're living in a time of massive, amazing change, like the Industrial Revolution on acid.

Kelly Lynch

The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito.

Austin O'Malley

The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.

Christopher Hitchens

In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority...and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the

Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.

Mark Twain

You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.

Gustave Flaubert