Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.

But seek till ye find, and, whatever ye find for the present, let your last act be to lay and leave yourselves on the righteousness of His Son, expecting life through His name, according to the promise of the Father.

Donald Cargill

Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

... informed ignorance provides the natural state of mind for research scientists at the ever-shifting frontiers of knowledge. People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Technology is us. There is no separation. It's a pure expression of human creative will. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe. I'm rather sure of that.

David Cronenberg

That is no use at all. What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.

Lord Melbourne

Poetry is not only dream and vision it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

Audre Lorde

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

William James

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

Stephen King

Taking it in its wider and generic application, I understand faith to be the supplement of sense or, to change the phrase, all knowledge which comes not to us through our senses we gain by faith in others.

Matthew Simpson

I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.'I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.

Christopher Hitchens

Poetry must be made by all and not by one.

Comte de Lautreamont

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

Thomas Sowell