The House of Commons starts its proceedings with a prayer. The chaplain looks at the assembled members with their varied intelligence and then prays for the country.

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

Eric Hoffer

Even in a time of fiscal austerity, education is more than just an expense.

Arne Duncan

I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored mans cause than those of the Democratic party.

Frederick Douglass

They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.

John Ruskin

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Aldous Huxley

I was lucky enough to see with my own eyes the recent stock-market crash, where they lost several million dollars, a rabble of dead money that went sliding off into the sea. Never as then, amid suicides, hysteria, and groups of fainting people, have I felt the sensation of real death, death without hope, death that is nothing but rottenness, for the spectacle was terrifying but devoid of greatness... I felt something like a divine urge to bombard that whole canyon of shadow, where ambulances collected suicides whose hands were full of rings.

Federico Garcia Lorca

There are some women who should barely be spoken to; they should only be caressed.

Edgar Degas

Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?

William S. Burroughs

If the creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out.

Arthur Koestler

Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death.Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.

William Shakespeare

The desire of advising has a very extensive prevalence; and, since advice cannot be given but to those that will hear it, a patient listener is necessary to the accommodation of all those who desire to be confirmed in the opinion of their own wisdom: a patient listener, however, is not always to be had; the present age, whatever age is present, is so vitiated and disordered, that young people are readier to talk than to attend, and good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections.

Samuel Johnson, July 21, 1753

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

Marcus Aurelius