When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions; that is the heart of science.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

George Eliot

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

Benjamin Franklin

As she came up to the arch Elizabeth saw with a start that it was written on. She went closer. She peered at the stone. There were names on it. Every grain of the surface had been carved with British names; their chiselled capitals rose from the level of her ankles to the height of the great arch itself; on every surface of every column as far as her eyes eyes could see there were names teeming, reeling, over surfaces of yards, of hundreds of yards, over furlongs of stone.She moved through the space beneath the arch where the man was sweeping. She found the other pillas identically marked, their faces obliterated on all sides by the names that were carved on them.'Who are these, these ...?; She gestured with her hand.''These?' The man with the brush sounded surprised. 'The lost.''Men who died in battle?''No. The lost, the ones they did not find. The others are in cemetries.''These are just the ... unfound?'She looked at the vault above her head and then around in panic at the endless writing, as though the surface of the sky had been papered in footnotes.When she could speak again, she said, 'from the whole war?'The man shook his head. 'Just these fields.' He gestured with his arm.Elizabeth went and sat on the steps on the other side of the monument. Beneath her was a formal garden with some rows of white headstones, each with a tended plant or flower at its base, each cleaned and beautiful in the weak winter sunlight.'Nobody told me.' She ran her fingers with their red-painted nails back through her thick dark hair. 'My God, nobody told me.

Sebastian Faulks, 'Birdsong' p.

What matters to me is learning and growing, and getting to do what I love to do. As long as I can do that, I'm happy.

Jeremy Renner

I think human society for tens of thousands of years has sent young men out in small groups to do things that are necessary but very dangerous. And they've always gotten killed doing it. And they've always turned it into a matter of honor and a way of gaining acceptance back into society if they survived.

Sebastian Junger

Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.

John Green

I suppose you are going home to see your families and friends. For the service you have done in this great struggle in which we are engaged I present you sincere thanks for myself and the country.

Abraham Lincoln

The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States - and war is what they got.

George W. Bush

The reason women don't play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public.

Phyllis Diller

Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.

Sydney Smith

I'm really interested in modern history, but to fulfill a History degree at Brown you have to do modern and pre-modern.

Emma Watson

No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.

Harry Emerson Fosdick