A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence.

Twenty-five years ago, while an undergraduate at Stanford, I got a job on campus as a lifeguard, deepening a love of swimming and water that has lasted throughout my life. I took the duties seriously and studied the swimmers with professional vigilance, relieved at the end of each day that no emergency rescue had been required. But the greatest challenge of the job was standing poolside in a bathing suit with my body on display.Work began in the locker room, where I changed into my Speedo and surveyed my reflection, assessing what would be on view for the next few hours. I was plagued by self-criticism. I imagined the swimmers judging my shape, until I made myself remember that I was there to guard their lives, not their fantasies. Later I performed my variation of the same ablutions everyone else did, showering and hair washing, the application of lotion and makeup -- preparations for re-entering the other world of walking upright on solid land.

Elizabeth Rosner, "The New York

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.

William James, The Principles of

The people who marry make a good marriage not marriage in itself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

To like and dislike the same things, this is what makes a solid friendship.

Sallust

Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.

George Jean Nathan

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

Melody Beattie

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

Henry Miller

We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning.

Albert Barnes

I like to think of myself as a fairly educated human being, but I'm a very uneducated actor when it comes to movies, directors, producers, actors for that matter.

Shailene Woodley

If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe -no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside us as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that's just what we do find inside us.

C.S. Lewis

When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.

Napoleon Bonaparte

War would end if the dead could return.

Stanley Baldwin