I love skating so much and I feel like every time I step out onto the ice, that's what I'm meant to do.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

C.S. Lewis

So, the darkness in life appears immediately when we sit down to do zazen because immediately we'll find out that our best intentions to do zazen well don't come off. Usually we don't do zazen quite as well as we want to. And we also find out a curious thing that even when we are very sincere, unbidden thoughts arise, unbidden feelings. Things come out of nowhere that we had no intention of summoning. And usually we spend some time fighting with these. I certainly did. A lot of time fighting with these. And I think some fighting can be good because we can feel our strength and our sincerity, but in the long run you just feed the demon when you fight it. You give it energy. In the long run what happens is that if we just attend, things settle. In that way, I think, we go into the poison. We darken the darkness.Zazen: a particular kind of meditation, unique to Zenhttp://www.dharmaweb.org/index.php/Poison_and_Joy_John_Tarrant,_Roshi

John Tarrant, Poison and Joy

Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.

Christopher Hitchens

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

George Orwell

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

Eric Hoffer

Al Jazeera aired a new tape of Osama bin Laden. It was the usual stuff, he called Bush evil, the Great Satan, called him a war monger. Basically, the same thing you heard at last night's Democratic debate.

Jay Leno

Without the smile from partial beauty won, Oh what were man? a world without a sun.

CAMPBELL: _Pl. of Hope,_ Pt. ii.

The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.

Theodore Leavitt

A joke is a very serious thing.

Winston Churchill

If one swallows a cup of chocolate only three hours after a copious lunch, everything will be perfectly digested and there will still be room for dinner.

JeanAnthelme BrillatSavarin

Believe in yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you.

Cynthia Kersey