With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

The film of evening light made the red earth lucent, so that its dimensions were deepened, so that a stone, a post, a building, had greater depth, and more solidity than in any daytime light; and these objects were curiously more individual- a post was more essentially a post, set off from the earth it stood in and the field of corn it stood out against. All plants were individuals, not the mass of crop; and the ragged willow tree was itself, standing free of all other willow trees. The earth contributed a light to the evening. The front of the gray, paintless house, facing the west, was luminous as the moon is. The gray dusty truck, in the yard before the door, stood out magically in this light, in the overdrawn perspective of a stereopticon.

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wr

The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.

Jan Patocka

It's always too soon to quit.

David T. Scoates

A science in its infancy is the least satisfactory, and, at the same time, the most profitable theme for a general description.

Herbert Dingle

Our typical Western diet is full of inflammatory fats - saturated fats, trans fats, too many omega-6, inflammatory, processed vegetable oils like soy and corn oils. These increase IGF-1 and stimulate pimple follicles.

Mark E. Hyman

Government is the only institution that can take a valuable commodity like paper, and make it worthless by applying ink.

Ludwig von Mises

For my convalescence, I had to exercise my voice only with vowels. It is a medical rule after a long loss of voice.

Nana Mouskouri

Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly, but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons, who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad.

Aravind Adiga

To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don't cling to you the way they do back home. You're able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. You're expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travelers acting stupidly. You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don't know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with thousands, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dysenteric, thirsty. There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event.

Don DeLillo

Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else.

Paul Farmer

This is the team. We're trying to go to the moon. If you can't put someone up, please don't put them down.

NASA

Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents.

Peg Bracken