We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, everyone should be serene, slow-pulsed and calm.

Robert G. Ingersoll

He alone is wise who can accommodate himself to all contingencies of life; but the fool contends, and struggling, like a swimmer, against the stream.

Proverb

I hope I know my own unworthiness, and that I hate and despise myself and all my fellow-creatures as every practicable Christian should.

Charles Dickens

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

Noam Chomsky

Any big hotels have got scandals,' he said. 'Just like every big hotel has got a ghost. Why? Hell, people come and go.

Stephen King

Please all, and you will please none.

Aesop

You can only rule over a subject race, especially when you are in a small minority, if you honestly believe yourself to be racially superior, and it helps towards this if you can believe that the subject race is biologically different.

George Orwell

On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.

Tom Robbins

I love eulogies. They are the most moving kind of speech because they attempt to pluck meaning from the fog, and on short order, when the emotions are still ragged and raw and susceptible to leaps.

Peggy Noonan

To find yourself, think for yourself.

Socrates

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

Langston Hughes

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.

Allen Ginsberg