Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased.

Ma Jian

The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to do when there is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it?

Georges Duhamel

If you don't change, then what's the point of anything happening to you? It'll still be happening to an unchanged person.

Douglas Coupland

I should like to say that I am as proud of my Chinese heritage and background as I am devoted to modern science, a part of human civilization of Western origin, to which I have dedicated and I shall continue to dedicate my work.

Chen Ning Yang

A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are easy as an old shoe are generally of little worth.

Charles Spurgeon

Entrusting your dreams or aspirations to the wrong person could be a critical mistake, lest they mistreat or neglect them. We are not nearly as careful with our dreams as we should be.

Ramani Durvasula

I don't understand why it's a sin if you love something and want to keep it from having to suffer.

Jodi Picoult

I stood for parliament with the amazing support and help of my ex-husband, but it's not something that was handed to me like a peerage. I worked hard and was elected. So my achievements, such as they are, are my own.

Louise Mensch

It's inspirational to see someone who is dying smile.

Arlen Specter

In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority...and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.

Joseph Brodsky

There is always something for which to be thankful.

Charles Dickens