In order to excel at anything, there are always hurdles, obstacles, or challenges one must get past. It's what bodybuilders call the pain period.

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I've been through it all, baby, I'm mother courage.

Elizabeth Taylor

I just don't crave junk food.

Cat Deeley

There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior.

Charles Dickens

None of my characters are rich or famous, and the situations they find themselves in could happen to anyone.

Nicholas Sparks

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.

Groucho Marx

To me, what socialism means is to guarantee a basic level of dignity. It's asserting the value of saying that the America we want and the America that we are proud of is one in which all children can access a dignified education. It's one in which no person is too poor to have the medicines they need to live.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Pleasure is Nature

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Und

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

Salvador Dali

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

Robert Graves

Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless, but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.

Jaron Lanier

I had very supportive parents that made the way for me, even at a time when there were very few women - no women, really maybe two or three women - and very few, fewer than that, African-American women heading in this direction, so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.

Leah Ward Sears