Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

Character is what can do without success.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.

Victor Hugo

Durability is part of what makes a great athlete.

Bill Russell

Reason and love are sworn enemies.

Pierre Corneille

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

Duke Ellington

Every Christmas now for years, I have found myself wondering about the point of the celebration. As the holiday has become more ecumenical and secular, it has lost much of the magic that I remember so fondly from childhood.

Whitley Strieber

Risk! Risk Anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those other voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

Katherine Mansfield

It's not like learning how to hit a curve ball in baseball.

Floyd Abrams

Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.

Plautus

Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.

Sir William Haley

But the truth of the matter is, we're an open society, we want to remain an open society, and there will continue to be vulnerability. That's why we have to meet the threats when they are not yet taking place on our territory and on our soil.

Condoleezza Rice

Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.

Clarence Day