Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

Much more than our other needs and endeavors, it is sexuality that puts us on an even footing with our kind: the more we practice it, the more we become like everyone else: it is in the performance of a reputedly bestial function that we prove our status as citizens: nothing is more public than the sexual act.

E. M. Cioran

Gypsy was the name my brother gave a pet turtle he had. I always thought it was so peculiar.

Joel Hodgson

I can last two months on a good compliment.

Mark Twain

For to be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully, is more than simple endurance it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph.

Thomas Mann

Unconsciousness is one of the most important conditions of good style in speaking and writing.

R. S. White

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.

Sir Thomas Browne

But the vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this - that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him. [from Middlemarch, a quote my mother thinks describes the kind of man my father was]

George Eliot

In conclusion, there is a marvelous anecdote from the occasion of Russell's ninetieth birthday that best serves to summarize his attitude toward God and religion. A London lady sat next to him at this party, and over the soup she suggested to him that he was not only the world's most famous atheist but, by this time, very probably the world's oldest atheist. What will you do, Bertie, if it turns out you're wrong? she asked. I mean, what if -- uh -- when the time comes, you should meet Him? What will you say? Russell was delighted with the question. His bright, birdlike eyes grew even brighter as he contemplated this possible future dialogue, and then he pointed a finger upward and cried, Why, I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence.'

Al Seckel, in Preface to Bertran

Value is what people are willing to pay for it.

John Naisbitt

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

W. H. Auden

Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.

Robert Duvall