In opera, as with any performing art, to be in great demand and to command high fees you must be good of course, but you must also be famous. The two are different things.

The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.

Che Guevara

As you become more clear about who you really are, you'll be better able to decide what is best for you - the first time around.

Oprah Winfrey

Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.

Laurence J. Peter

Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny.

Henry James Sumner Maine

I feel most empires fell when they started to act human, but then look at Russia. They kept a pretty strong hand, and they fell from Afghanistan alone because Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. I guess you just can't sustain it.

Colin Quinn

Why do people respect the package rather than the man?

Michel de Montaigne

Nessuna passione cova più forte in petto all'uomo, del desiderio di far pensare gli altri a modo proprio. Nulla offusca tanto il cielo della sua felicit? , nulla lo riempie tanto di furore, quanto il sapere che un altro tiene a vili cose di cui egli fa gran conto. Whigs e Tories, liberali e laburisti, per che cosa lottano - se non per il loro prestigio? Non l'amore della verit? , ma la sete di dominio scaglia fazione contro fazione, e fa desiderare a una parrocchia la rovina di un'altra parrocchia. Ognuno pensa a serbare la pancia per i fichi e ad asservirsi l'avversario, piuttosto che al trionfo della verit? e all'esaltazione della virtù.

Virginia Woolf

Gardening is how I relax. It's another form of creating and playing with colors.

Oscar de la Renta

Games are a compromise between intimacy and keeping intimacy away.

Eric Berne, Games People Play

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.

Woodrow Wilson

Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The brain needed to stay incessantly active, and if it was not getting its usual stimulation..., it would create its own stimulation in the form of hallucinations.

Oliver Sacks

The first and most important rule to observe...is to use our entire forces with the utmost energy. The second rule is to concentrate our power as much as possible against that section where the chief blows are to be delivered and to incur disadvantages elsewhere, so that our chances of success may increase at the decisive point. The third rule is never to waste time. Unless important advantages are to be gained from hesitation, it is necessary to set to work at once. By this speed a hundred enemy measures are nipped in the bud, and public opinion is won most rapidly. Finally, the fourth rule is to follow up our successes with the utmost energy. Only pursuit of the beaten enemy gives the fruits of victory.

Karl Von Clausewitz