Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

Honore de Balzac

Believe you can and you're halfway there.

Theodore Roosevelt

I would have told him that I appreciated his friendship through the years and that I had learned a lot from him. I really loved Frank like you do a brother.

Jimmy Carl Black

When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.

Margaret Chase Smith

In the early days all I hoped was to make a living out of what I did best. But, since there's no real market for masturbation I had to fall back on my bass playing abilities.

Les Claypool

It is bad luck to be superstitious.

Andrew W. Mathis

I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows. That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen, patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin), but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused.

C.S. Lewis

The people I'm furious with are the Women's Liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept quiet or it ruins the whole racket.

Anita Loos

¡Si nuestra amistad depende de cosas como el espacio y el tiempo, entonces, cuando por fin superemos el espacio y el tiempo, habremos destruido nuestra propia hermandad! Pero supera el espacio, y nos quedará sólo un Aquí. Supera el tiempo, y nos quedará sólo un Ahora. Y entre el Aquí y el Ahora, ¿no crees que podremos volver a vernos un par de veces?

Richard Bach

My life turned out to be beyond my greatest dreams.

Anthony Hopkins

You have to believe what you're saying if you're going to convince me. I just can't break that rule, even if I want to.

Ashly Lorenzana

In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. . They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

George Orwell