Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by pretense. Self delusion was impossible, truth exposed in this blinding light. Nothing as I thought it had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

Francis Bacon

If one can know how good a city is by its smell, one should know how good a society is by the women's status.

Santosh Kalwar

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Samuel Johnson

McLaggen makes Grawp look like a gentleman.

J.K. Rowling

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

Charles Dickens

The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.

Leo Tolstoy

The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow to their full potential. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance beyond the wildest dreams. We would have more than one Einstein, Edison, Schweitzer, Mother Theresa, Dr. Salk and other great minds in a century.

Sidney Madwed

I am the truth-teller. I tried never to be mean, but Simon did tell me at one point. 'Doug, if you tell the truth, you don't have a choice.

Doug Hall

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.

Edward Hopper

It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.

E. J. Hobsbawm

Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep: it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; 'tis meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. 'Tis the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise-man even. There is only one thing...that I dislike in sleep; 'tis that it resembles death; there's very little difference between a man in his first sleep, and a man in his last sleep.

Miguel de Cervantes

Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.

Captain J. G. Stedman