There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.

Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins,And brought me home, as all are brought, to lieIn that vast house, common to serfs and Thanes,I shall not die, I shall not utterly die,For beauty born of beauty-- that remains.

Madison Cawein, from To a WindFl

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

Winston Churchill

I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.

TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot

She had been trying hourly to ensure that this new friendship remained such, to be certain that it would not slip out of the careful grasp of her fingers and into the darker champers of her heart.

Shamim Sarif

But the inexplicability of the General's conduct dwelt much on her thoughts. That he was very particular in his eating, she had, by her own unassisted observation, already discovered; but why should he say one thing so positively, and mean another all the while, was most unaccountable. How were people, at that rate, to be understood?

Jane Austen

It is my sincere hope that hospitals across Indiana, and America, continue to strive for excellence when it comes to providing medical care. This proposed rule will be harmful to communities who wish to upgrade their medical facilities.

Steve Buyer

Most small business owners are not particularly sophisticated business people. That's not a criticism they're passionate about cutting hair or cooking food, and that's why they got in the business, not because they have an MBA.

Andrew Mason

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

Henry Ward Beecher

All beauty is sad. For it fades.

David Gemmell