For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.

A journalist is a person who has mistaken their calling.

Otto von Bismarck

The mind of God is a mystery and none can understand it.

Rae Carson

A heroic figure... not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on him.

Ezra Pound

Well, I get my subject on Wednesday night I think it out carefully on Thursday, and make my rough sketch on Friday morning I begin, and stick to it all day, with my nose well down on the block.

John Tenniel

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.(note: Clinton borrowed from Eisenhower for this one)

William Jefferson Clinton, First

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it.

Patrick Ness

Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.

Aesop

Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Let those who would write heroic poems make their life an heroic poem.

John Milton

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

Neil Gaiman

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

Erma Bombeck

Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

John Milton