To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life slowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.

There is a destiny that shapes our ends rough, hew them as we will.

Frank Harris

Idleness is an appendix to nobility.

Robert Burton

But the deep background that lies behind and beyond what we call humor is revealed only to the few who, by instinct or by effort, have given thought to it. The world's humor, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilization. Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself: the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and fretful anxieties of today that fade into nothingness tomorrow, the burning pain and the sharp sorrow that are softened in the gentle retrospect of time, till as we look back upon the course that has been traversed, we pass in view the panorama of our lives, as people in old age may recall, with mingled tears and smiles, the angry quarrels of their childhood. And here, in its larger aspect, humor is blended with pathos till the two are one, and represent, as they have in every age, the mingled heritage of tears and laughter that is our lot on earth.

Stephen Leacock

Happiness is spiritual, born of truth and love. It is unselfish therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it.

Mary Baker Eddy

It's commonly said that people who've been ill in childhood and who've had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don't look at the world in the way that other people do, and if you were inclined to be a writer, that's a help.

John Keegan

War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.

Desiderius Erasmus

It is surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

Barbara Kingsolver

For, behind the scenes, halfway around the world in Mexico, were two decades of aggressive research on wheat that not only enabled Mexico to become self-sufficient with respect to wheat production but also paved the way to rapid increase in its production in other countries.

Norman Borlaug

A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the mother of ages.

Thomas Carlyle

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.

Leonardo da Vinci

I'm 0 for 3 with marriage - the scoreboard doesn't lie, never has. So what we all have is a marriage of the heart. To sully or contaminate or radically disrespect this union with a shameful contract is something that I will leave to the amateurs and the Bible grippers.

Charlie Sheen

Each is responsible for his own actions.

H. L. Hunt