What a man calls his conscience is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love.

We must advertise to U.S. business that we are there, that our attitude has changed, and that we care. When we are asked to help, we have to perform and provide the right advice.

Lawrence Eagleburger

Money is in some respects life's fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.

P. T. Barnum

Stress and worry, they solve nothing. What they do is block creativity. You are not even able to think about the solutions. Every problem has a solution.

Susan L. Taylor

The crown of literature is poetry.

W. Somerset Maugham

In the NUDE, all that is not beautiful is obscene.

Robert Bresson

Salomé, Salomé, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings. I cannot tell what they mean .... I am sad to-night. Therefore dance for me. Dance for me, Salomé, I beseech you. If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it you, even unto the half of my kingdom.

Oscar Wilde

He always looked forward to the evening drives through the centre of Shanghai, this electric and lurid city, more exciting than any other in the world. As they reached the Bubbling Well Road he pressed his face to the windshield and gazed at the pavements lined with night-clubs and gambling dens, crowded with bar-girls and gangsters and rich beggars with their bodyguards. Crowds of gamblers pushed their way into the jai alai stadiums, blocking the traffic in the Bubbling Well Road. An armoured police van with two Thompson guns mounted in a steel turret above the driver swung in front of the Packard and cleared the pavement. A party of young Chinese women in sequinned dresses tripped over a child's coffin decked with paper flowers. Arms linked together, they lurched against the radiator grille of the Packard and swayed past Jim's window, slapping the windshield with their small hands and screaming obscenities. Nearby, along the windows of the Sun Sun department store in the Nanking Road, a party of young European jews were fighting in and out of the strolling crowds with a gang of older German boys in the swastika armbands of the Graf Zeppelin Club. Chased by the police sirens, they ran through the entrance of the Cathay Theatre, the world's largest cinema, where a crowd of Chinese shopgirls and typists, beggars and pickpockets spilled in the street to watch people arriving for the evening performance. As they stepped from their limousines the women steered their long skirts through the honour guard of fifty hunchbacks in mediaeval costume. Three months earlier, when his parents had taken Jim to the premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, there had been two hundred hunchbacks, recruited by the management of the theatre from every back alley in Shanghai. As always, the spectacle outside the theatre for exceeded anything shown on its screen.

J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork -- reading, writing, thinking--can.

Helen Gurley Brown

The truth is that it is natural, as well as necessary, for every man to be a vagabond occasionally.

Samuel H. Hammond

To create a little flower is the labor of ages.

William Blake

I even tried to tell myself to live my best life today.

John Green

I was having that dream again, the good one where we're all in heaven and never heard of Treegap.

Natalie Babbitt