...He made no complaint whatsoever about the bad reputation he had attracted throughout the world, assured me that he himself was the person most concerned by the destruction of superstition, and admitted to me that as far as his own power was concerned he had been afraid on only one occasion, which was when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than his colleagues, shout out from the pulpit: 'Dearly beloved, never forget, when you hear anyone vaunt the progress of enlightenment, that the Devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist!'

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

Mark Strand

You and me will read a book and find three interesting things that we remember. But Colin finds everything intriguing. He reads a book about presidents and he remembers more of it because everything he reads clicks in his head as fugging interesting.

John Green

Pilgrimage to the place of the wise is to find escape from the flame of separateness.

Rumi

There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.

Jane Austen

You speak truth, said Themistocles; I should never have been famous if I had been of Seriphus; 4 nor you, had you been of Athens.

Plutarch

There are many qualities that make a great leader. But having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader.

Rudy Giuliani

We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.

Lionel Trilling

I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

Martin Scorsese

Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.

Janet Malcolm

A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician.

Hippocrates

Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think - in a deeper voice.

Bill Cosby

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

Neil Gaiman