We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the intolerable compliment. Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child he will take endless trouble and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.

Passions are the only orators to always convinces us.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

One of the great attractions of patriotism it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

Aldous Huxley

I am sure now that life is not what it is purported to be and that nature, in the canny words of the Scotch theologue, 'is not as natural as it looks.

Loren Eiseley

Being in 'Us Weekly' does not make you famous.

Bradley Cooper

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

Mark Twain

Double, no triple, our troubles and we'd still be better off than any other people on earth. It is time that we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause.

Ronald Reagan

Money is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. It is so much warmth, so much bread.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties, entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad, as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by this time, such as kindness or cleverness.

Julie Burchill

Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway.

Mary Kay Ash

I am not willing to risk the lives of German soldiers for countries whose names we cannot spell properly.

Volker Ruhe

Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.

Jodi Picoult