Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them.

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.

Edmond de Goncourt

leave him free, and the mere sense of liberty would content him, joined to the knowledge that his presence was dear to those whom he loved best.

Louisa May Alcott

Very little is needed to make a happy life it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius

Go ahead and point out my flaws and weaknesses to me. In doing so it's just something to get excited about! Knowing there's a flaw that my Heavenly Daddy wants to make beautiful is rather exciting!

Melissa Bradley

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

David Byrne

Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.

Jim Fiebig

The trouble with life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time.

John Barrymore

If nations always moved from one set of furnished rooms to another -- and always into a better set -- things might be easier, but the trouble is that there is no one to prepare the new rooms. The future is worse than the ocean -- there is nothing there. It will be what men and circumstances make it.

Alexander Herzen

It's rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether it's Hemingway, Van Gogh... Robert Schumann has been mentioned... Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath... some of them with rather grim ends.

Stephen Fry

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.

William Shakespeare

The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home.

Jeanette Winterson

I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.

Audrey Hepburn