Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

Where children are, there is the golden age.

Novalis

An inordinate love of ritual can be harmful to the soul, unless, of course, in times of great crisis, when ritual can protect the soul from fracture.

Jeff Vandermeer

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.

William James

The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.

Frances Wright

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.

Walt Whitman

The stories people tell you about themselves seem to retain the possibility of being false. But what you discover about them by yourself seems to be the truth.

John Verdon

Then it was that Jo, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth's unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by that exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty.

Louisa May Alcott

The past has no power over the present moment.

Eckhart Tolle

All honor to him who shall win the prize. The world has cried for a thousand years. But to him who tries and fails and dies, I give great honor and glory and tears.

Joaquin Miller

I've always been very zealous about not invading other people's private spaces.

Peter Jennings

A page of history is worth a pound of logic.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

I'm very old-fashioned in some ways because of my father, who thought that being a public servant was an honor. Everyone must find a capacity in which they can serve, because we all benefit from society.

Kathleen Turner