It was morning through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.

The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed...But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't. Either way, we're for it.

C.S. Lewis

I have a thing for evil bald bad guys. The Kurgan is too sexy.

Ernest Cline

It's funny how social activists usually protest against the only things that have a credible chance of achieving the activists' goals.

Craig Bruce

No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.

Milan Kundera

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

John Keats

Science packages theory, places it on a throne, and honors and protects it much like a queen. Engineers make the queen come down from the throne and scrub the floor. And if she doesn't work, we fire her.

Robert J. Marks II

It's the way you ride the trail that counts.

Dale Evans

If someone is blessed as I am is not willing to clean out the barn, who will?

H. Ross Perot

To fail is a natural consequence of trying, To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again.

David Viscott

I think it's important for artists to work together. It's great for fans to see, like, Ludacris came out to our show in Atlanta and kinda made a surprise appearance there, it shows a mutual respect for what each other does.

Jason Aldean

Like those statues which must be made larger than nature in order that, viewed from below, or from a distance, they may appear to be of the natural size, certain truths must be strained in order that the public may form a just idea of them.

Joseph Roux