I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.

To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.

Samuel Johnson

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

John Ruskin

Hearts Live By Being Wounded

Oscar Wilde

The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.

Bertrand Russell

I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

Antonio Tabucchi

[from ]For a historian considering the achievement of a certain aim, there are heroes; for the artist treating of a man's relation to all sides of life there cannot and should not be heroes, but there should be men.[...]The historian has to deal with the results of an event, the artist with the fact of the event. An historian in describing a battle says: 'The left flank of such and such an army was advanced to attack such and such a village and drove out the enemy, but was compelled to retire; then the cavalry, which was sent to attack, overthrew...' and so on. But these words have no meaning for the artist and do not actually touch on the event itself. Either from his own experience, or from the letters, memoirs, and accounts, the artist realizes a certain event to himself, and very often (to take the example of a battle) the deductions the historian permits himself to make as to the activity of such and such armies prove to be the very opposite of the artist's deductions. The difference of the results arrived at is also to be explained by the sources from which the two draw their information. For the historian (to keep to the case of a battle) the chief source is found in the reports of the commanding officers and the commander-in-chief. The artist can draw nothing from such sources; they tell him nothing and explain nothing to him. More than that: the artist turns away from them as he finds inevitable falsehood in them. To say nothing of the fact that after any battle the two sides nearly always describe it in quite contradictory ways, in every description of a battle there is a necessary lie, resulting from the need of describing in a few words the actions of thousands of men spread over several miles, and subject to most violent moral excitement under the influence of fear, shame and death.

Leo Tolstoy

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called

Carl Sagan

Oh there are lots of doctors and medical professionals out there who buy my devices at whole sale price.

Alex Chiu

We need comprehensive reform that will make America the best place in the world to invest and do business.

Jim DeMint

Just kidding, I've been very athletic all my life.

Kiana Tom

It is fear that makes you believe that you are living and that you will be dead.What we do not want is the fear to come to an end. That is why we have invented all these new minds, new sciences,new talks, therapies, choiceless awareness and various other gimmicks.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Unlike then, the mail stream of today has diminished by such things as e-mails and faxes and cell phones and text messages, largely electronic means of communication that replace mail.

John M. McHugh