Only those who have patience to do simple things perfectly ever acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.

There can be no reconciliation where there is no open warfare. There must be a battle, a brave boisterous battle, with pennants waving and cannon roaring, before there can be peaceful treaties and enthusiastic shaking of hands.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

Voltaire

An executive is someone who talks with visitors so the other employees can get their work done.

Source Unknown

A love of classical music is only partially a natural response to hearing the works performed, it also must come about by a decision to listen carefully, to pay close attention, a decision inevitably motivated by the cultural and social prestige of the art.

Charles Rosen

We give you the facts. I told you information is power - knowledge is power. We can't be in an ideological battle to redeem the soul of this country if we don't have the facts.

Tavis Smiley

Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user's manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Giving up even an ounce of precious freedom is a very serious thing to do.

Charles Schumer

In civilized society man stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. . . . Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. . . . Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nation

Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.

Virginia Woolf

Justifying conscription to promote the cause of liberty is one of the most bizarre notions ever conceived by man! Forced servitude, with the risk of death and serious injury as a price to live free, makes no sense.

Ron Paul

Show us a man who never makes a mistake and we will show you a man who never makes anything. The capacity for occasional blundering is inseparable from the capacity to bring things to pass. The only men who are past the danger of making mistakes are the men who sleep at Greenwood.

H. L. Wayland

It is a time of change,'' Sazed said. ''Perhaps it is also time to learn of other truths, other ways.

Brandon Sanderson