Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

Who writes poetry imbibes honey from the poisoned lips of life.

William Rose Benet

Being close but feeling far, talking but not being heard, loving but not being loved, that is the painful reality of a dying relationship.

Steve Maraboli

I've always liked the moonless night best. It's easier to say things in the dark. It's easier to be yourself.

Patrick Rothfuss

This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.

Elmer Davis

All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.

John Calvin

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

Samuel Butler

If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism -- at least in the sense of this work -- is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.

Ludwig Feuerbach

The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. Your have to catch up with it yourself.

Benjamin Franklin

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will --whatever we may think.

Lawrence Durrell

I have a pet lizard named Puff, five goldfish - named Pinky, Brain, Jowels, Pearl and Sandy, an oscar fish named Chef, two pacus, an albino African frog named Whitey, a bonsai tree, four Venus flytraps, a fruit fly farm and sea monkeys.

Chris Pratt

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

If we're destroying our trees and destroying our environment and hurting animals and hurting one another and all that stuff, there's got to be a very powerful energy to fight that. I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.

Ellen DeGeneres