The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

As a rock on the seashore he standeth firm, and the dashing of the waves disturbeth him not. He raiseth his head like a tower on a hill, and the arrows of fortune drop at his feet. In the instant of danger, the courage of his heart here, and scorn to fly.

Akhenaton

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.

Wallace Stevens

I think I was born strong-willed. That's not the kind of thing you can learn. The advantage is, you stick to what you believe in and rarely get pushed out of what you want to do.

Joan Jett

The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.

Ruth Benedict

There's immense fun to be had as long as you can sort of sneak it past DC. I have been told on occasion that I need to have more respect for these characters.

Garth Ennis

On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism'.

Barry Goldwater

At sometime in our lives a devil dwells within us, causes heartbreaks, confusion and troubles, then dies.

Theodore Roosevelt

Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame, when once it is within thee.

George Herbert

I had a million questions to ask God: but when I met Him, they all fled my mind; and it didn't seem to matter.

Christopher Morley

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

Henry David Thoreau

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Thomas A. Edison

If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.

J. B. Priestley