I love the wry motto of the Paleontological Society, meant both literally and figuratively, for hammers are the main tool of our trade: Frango ut patefaciam - I break in order to reveal.

The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by the twopenny post, a day or two previous.

Charles Dickens

If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say.

Barbara McClintock

Bowden Cable is the sort of honest and dependable operative that is the backbone of SpecOps. They never win commendations or medalsand the public has no knowledge of them at all. They are all worth ten of people like me.

Jasper Fforde

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

William Dean Howells

There is but one love of Jesus, as there is but one person in the poor -- Jesus. We take vows of chastity to love Christ with undivided love; to be able to love him with undivided love we take a vow of poverty which frees us from all material possessions, and with that freedom we can love him with undivided love, and from this vow of undivided love we surrender ourselves totally to him in the person who takes his place.

Mother Theresa

I've learned to stay away from publicity addicts, people who want to be famous for no reason.

Paz de la Huerta

As to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost that inheritance - who could not get work, and consequently could not get wages, and consequently could not get bread - they were left to suffer on, perhaps inevitably left. It would not do to stop the progress of invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; the war could not be terminated; efficient relief could not be raised. There was no help then; so the unemployed underwent their destiny - ate the bread and drank the waters of affliction.Misery generates hate. These sufferers hated the machines which they believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those buildings.

Charlotte Bronte, Shirley Part O

If one takes pride in one's craft, you won't let a good thing die. Risking it through not pushing hard enough is not a humility.

Paul Keating

In this world, everyone wants to know everything about you, and I think that's funny.

Leighton Meester

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

Thomas Carlyle

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of despair.

Joseph Conrad

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests

Gore Vidal