I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing makes you more tolerant of a neighbor's noisy party than being there.

Franklin P. Jones

I want to be part of your story. I want your story to rearrange the symbols in my mind. I want your voice to be my voice.

David Bowles

Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim.

Jane Austen

Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.

Plutarch

Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

Evelyn Waugh

There comes a moment in the day when you have written your pages in the morning, attended to your correspondence in the afternoon, and have nothing further to do. Then comes that hour when you are bored; that's the time for sex.

H. G. [Herbert George] Wells

To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.

Charles de Montesquieu

How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy.

Paul Sweeney

The message of Passover remains as powerful as ever. Freedom is won not on the battlefield but in the classroom and the home. Teach your children the history of freedom if you want them never to lose it.

Jonathan Sacks

There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.

Oliver Sacks

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

Iris Murdoch