Once music ceases to be ephemeral - always disappearing - and becomes instead material... it leaves the condition of traditional music and enters the condition of painting. It becomes a painting, existing as material in space, not immaterial in time.

To be beautiful you had to be willowy and tall. When you were as short as Clary was, just over five feet, you were cute. Not pretty or beautiful, but cute.

Cassandra Clare

Happiness, contentment, the health and growth of the soul, depend, as men have proved over and over again, upon some simple issue, some single turning of the soul.

George A. Smith

Enjoy things which are pleasant that is not the evil it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.

Thomas Carlyle

Perfect soldier, perfect gentleman never gave offence to anyone not even the enemy.

A. J. P. Taylor

Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

Ambrose Bierce

I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson - the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

James A. Michener, The World is

Stem cell research is the key to developing cures for degenerative conditions like Parkinson's and motor neuron disease from which I and many others suffer. The fact that the cells may come from embryos is not an objection, because the embryos are going to die anyway.

Stephen Hawking

But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken.

Pedro Calderon de la Barca

The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done.

Arthur Balfour

Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning hand springs or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it.

Helen Rowland

Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.

Alfred Russel Wallace

It's useless to try and make rhyme or reason of it, because one guy thinks one thing and the other guy sees a whole other thing. So I try not to take them too seriously. Lately I have them screened so I only read the positive ones.

David Zucker