A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

George Eliot

Calamity is the test of integrity.

Samuel Richardson

I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The modest person is usually admired, if people ever hear of them.

Edward W. Howe

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

James Baldwin

Internationalism on the other hand admits that spiritual achievements have their roots deep in national life from this national consciousness art and literature derive their character and strength and on it even many of the humanistic sciences are firmly based.

Christian Lous Lange

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

George Bernard Shaw

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Søren Kierkegaard

I feel like I don't watch that many shows with death.

Lena Dunham

When you're famous, you don't get to meet people because they want you to like them when the present themselves to you, and you don't see the real people.

Cass Elliot

As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.

Quintilian

After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.

Wallace Stevens