Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.

People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing.

Will Rogers

Men of my age live in a state of continual desperation.

Vita Sackville-West

As to Don Juan, confess that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?

Lord (George Gordon) Byron

I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza.

Robert Indiana

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

Dalai Lama

He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.

Richard Whately

Writing a novel is agony.

George Orwell

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.

Walt Disney

My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method.

Frederik Pohl

By the time you get to your ball, if you don't know what to do with it, try another sport.

Julius Boros

Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

Diane Arbus

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

Paul Valery