Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions.

Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.

Johann von Goethe

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

George Bernard Shaw

Beauty magazines make my girlfriend feel ugly.

James De La Vega

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long and the age of the great epics is past.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. Weeven we herehold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the freehonorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.

Abraham Lincoln

When I tried to play something and screwed up, I'd hear some other note that would come into play. Then I started trying different things to find the beauty in it.

Dimebag Darrell

I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government.

Edward Norton

From Les Miserables:All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accent of children, -- voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom.Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel.These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.

Victor Hugo

If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.

LinChi

A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done.

Marge Piercy

Isn't it strange that ... people build walls to keep an enemy out, and there's only one part of the world and one philosophy where they have to build walls to keep their people in

Ronald Reagan