My mother was all about unconditional love, and I don't think we give that to our patients a lot. At the end of the day, what they really need you to do is to look at them in the eye and say, 'I'm here for you. I'm going to make sure this works out.

If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.

Jane Smiley

Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.

Eric Hoffer

To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.

William Arthur Ward

Knowledge is power. Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -- broad, deep knowledge -- is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's progress is to feel the great heartthrobs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.

Helen Keller

We read too much Shakespeare at school, and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama, in which an impatient crown prince frets at his long subordination and begins to scheme for the throne he knows he merits, was promised and has earned.

James Buchan

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

Samuel Butler

The devil is in the details.

Anonymous

Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since.

Dame Edith Sitwell

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Vince Lombardi

In times like these men should utter nothing for which they would not be willingly responsible through time and in eternity.

Abraham Lincoln

In Words, as Fashions, the same Rule will hold;Alike Fantastick, if too New, or Old;Be not the first by whom the New are try

Alexander Pope, Essay On Critici

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.

Henri Frederic Amiel