Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter. To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram -- lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull -- he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins -- that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path -- he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales -- happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.

A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.

Samuel Johnson

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.

Octavio Paz

I think I usually have quite ordinary dreams. Sometimes my dreams take me to other dimensions. I can travel in my mind especially when I'm dreaming I focus my mind on what I want to dream. If I want to fly, I focus on flying.

Uri Geller

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenb

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

Anais Nin

I always know what's happening on the court. I see a situation occur, and I respond.

Larry Bird

I hope that I serve by being a teacher.

Jenna Bush

Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.

Jean Rostand

How a sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated in him as his only duty,

Charles Lamb

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

Samuel Johnson

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

William James

Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see -- not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness.

Lewis H. Lapham