A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.

Salman Rushdie

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.

Kahlil Gibran

Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They become responsive to grandiose schemes, and will display unequaled steadfastness, formidable energies and a special fitness in the performance of tasks which would stump superior people. It seems paradoxical that defeat in dealing with the possible should embolden people to attempt the impossible, but a familiarity with the mentality of the weak reveals that what seems a path of daring is actually an easy way out: It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings. For when we fail in attaining the impossible we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task.

Eric Hoffer

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

Samuel Johnson

You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.

Hermann Hesse

]Sardisoften turning her thoughts here]you like a goddessand in your song most of all she rejoiced.But now she is conspicuous among Lydian womenas sometimes at sunsetthe rosyfingered moonsurpasses all the stars. And her lightstretches over salt seaequally and flowerdeep fields.And the beautiful dew is poured outand roses bloom and frailchervil and flowering sweetclover.But she goes back and forth rememberinggentle Atthis and in longingshe bites her tender mind

Sappho

To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

George Santayana

Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.

Neil Gaiman

After you start learning all about the mechanics of piloting a riverboat, you stop seeing all the pretty sunsets and you start thinking about the weather.

John Hartford

People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people.

Michael Lewis

When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.

Rodney Dangerfield

When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

Brendan Behan