Mediocrity is self-inflicted and genius is self-bestowed.

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

Sir Richard Francis Burton

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

Henry David Thoreau

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

Robertson Davies

It's easy to look at people and make a quick judgments about them, their present and their past, but you'd be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides. What a person shows to the world is only one tiny facet of the iceberg hidden from sight. and more often then not, it's lined with cracks and scars that go all the way to the foundation of their soul.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

If there is any country on earth where the course of true love may be expected to run smooth, it is America.

Harriet Martineau

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

Terry Pratchett

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.

Gregory Maguire

As I pass it, I feel as if I saw a dear old mother, sweet in her weakness, trembling at the approach of her dissolution, but not appealing to me against the inevitable, rather endeavouring to reassure me by her patience, and pointing to a hopeful future.

Thomas Edward Brown

The strongest of all warriors are these two

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love!

William Shakespeare