Why do you have to a nonconformist like everybody else?

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution

Bertrand Russell

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity --it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

John Keats

Calvin, what kind of trouble are you planning to make? No trouble at all, said Calvin, annoyed. Why do you think I want to cause trouble? Because you are awake.

Orson Scott Card

It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Think: what do you work at?

Leo Tolstoy

The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.

Vincent Van Gogh

A man is known by the books he reads.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, which must have cost many a smile to the intending romancer who was keen about his work. It appears to me as little to the point as the equally celebrated distinction between the novel and the romance- to answer as little to any reality. There are bad novels and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning, and I can as little imagine speaking of a novel of character as I can imagine speaking of a picture of character. When one says picture, one says of character, when one says novel, one says of incident, and the terms may be transposed. What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? What is a picture or a novel that is not of character? What else do we seek in it and find in it?

Henry James, essay The Art of Fi

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.

Voltaire

Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.

Nicolas Chamfort

How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!

Eric Hoffer

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Francis Bacon

There can be no defense like elaborate courtesy.

E. V. Lucas