My mother is a big believer in being responsible for your own happiness. She always talked about finding joy in small moments and insisted that we stop and take in the beauty of an ordinary day. When I stop the car to make my kids really see a sunset, I hear my mother's voice and smile.

You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.

Max Beerbohm

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

I came to Venice for the first time in 1968 and was lucky enough to make the acquaintanceship, and then the friendship, of two Venetians, Roberta and Franco, who remain my best friends here after almost 50 years.

Donna Leon

Attempts to connect men's circumstances too closely with their literary productions are usually, I believe, unsuccessful.

C.S. Lewis

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Much more than our other needs and endeavors, it is sexuality that puts us on an even footing with our kind: the more we practice it, the more we become like everyone else: it is in the performance of a reputedly bestial function that we prove our status as citizens: nothing is more public than the sexual act.

E. M. Cioran

The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor

Thomas Carlyle

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.

Wayne Dyer

I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked at it and looked at me and said, 'What are you?'

Grace Hopper

In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify but which he must accept upon faith and belief.

Georg Simmel

For every moment I smile, I've endured a thousand frowns

Brian A. Brown

The triumph of hope over experience

Samuel Johnson