People and squirrels are very different. Most people will not argue that. But I find that there is one situation in which they're very similar. And that is: when I am driving towards them in my car. Then they're kind of hard to tell apart - especially if the human is kind of hairy.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.

Benjamin Franklin

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.

Charles Lamb

The universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes--every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man.

Orison Swett Marden

Sometimes, in a summer morning,having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrisetill noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around orflitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in atmy west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distanthighway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasonslike corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of thehands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, butso much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientalsmean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, Iminded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light somework of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothingmemorable is accomplished.

Henry David Thoreau

I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, Well! give me peace in my day. Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace; and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisi

Everyone says, 'You give birth, you go home, and you have this amazing baby and it's just beautiful'. And I walked in and I just started sobbing.

Bridget Moynahan

It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.

Anne Lamott

I don't listen to people's opinions. I have people around me who I can trust, but most of all I listen to myself.

Mary J. Blige

As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?

Lyndon B. Johnson

What words cannot convey ... the mind can read.

Stephen Richards

It must be remembered that the sea is a great breeder of friendship. Two men who have known each other for twenty years find that twenty days at sea bring them nearer than ever they were before, or else estrange them.

Gilbert Parker

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterward, when you've worked on your own corner.

Aldous Huxley