Perhaps I'd been a slow developer, but I was well into my forties before I realized that you don't have to comply with a request just because it's reasonable or reasonably put. Age is the great dis-obliger. You can be yourself and say no.

Help yourself, and Heaven will help you.

Jean de La Fontaine

My mother was the sweetest lady who ever lived on this planet, but if you tried to tell her that Jesus wasn't a Christian, she would stomp you to death.

Dick Gregory

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

Nelson Mandela

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

G. M. Trevelyan

In the artist's recreation of the world we are enabled to see the world.

John W. Gardner, The Art of Fict

It is a process of diverting one's scattered forces into one powerful channel.

James Allen

The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.

Marian Wright Edelman

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.

Robertson Davies, Fifth Business

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Thomas Jefferson

Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.

Herman Melville

Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.

Paramahansa Yogananda

We have been travelling through a cloud. The sky has been dark ever since the war began.

Black Kettle