A man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill

A good book is the very essence of a good man. His virtues survive in it, while the foibles and faults of his actual life are forgotten. All the goodly company of the excellent and great sit around my table, or look down on me from yonder shelves, waiting patiently to answer my questions and enrich me with their wisdom. A precious book is a foretaste of immortality.

Theodore L. Cuyler

Never enter into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many on their getting warm, becoming rude and shooting one another.

Thomas Jefferson

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals nay it is treachery to comrades.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

George Bernard Shaw

It bothers me when I hear it in a car commercial or some such. But for the most part, it's better than seeing sacred music relegated to the scrap heap.

Richard Morris

Science is a way to pursue one's sense of inquiry at the expense of the State.

Lev Artsimovich

She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.

Oscar Wilde

To accept good advice is but to increase one's own ability

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Many a play is like a painted backdrop, something to be looked at from the front. An Ibsen play is like a black forest, something you can enter, something you can walk about in. There you can lose yourself: you can lose yourself. And once inside, you find such wonderful glades, such beautiful, sunlit places.

Minnie Maddern Fiske, Mrs. Fiske

Whoso loves Believes the impossible.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

The problem with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than their minds.

Walter Duranty

The prime minister found something hopeful in the man's eyes and manner. The 30 or so people who run this world analyze one another that way and then make decisions of life and death for us. Scary, but true.

Hugh Sidey