None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots.

Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.

Richard Russo

There are many examples of women that have excelled in learning, and even in war, but this is no reason we should bring em all up to Latin and Greek or else military discipline, instead of needle-work and housewifery.

Bernard Mandeville

There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry.

Henry Miller

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

Henry Miller

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

John Ruskin

Honestly, Clary, if you don't start utilizing a bit of your natural feminine superiority I just don't know what I'll do with you.

Cassandra Clare

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

Alain de Botton

Companies like I.B.M. have offered women scholarships to study engineering for years, and women engineers routinely get higher starting salaries than men.

Warren Farrell

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

Bill Gates, Time Magazine, Janua

Nature is a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given

Albert Camus

Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.

Mary McLeod Bethune

To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery --even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness --is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.

Andre Breton