A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.

Those who have lost an infant are never, in a way, without an infant.

Leigh Hunt

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Not gold but only men can makeA people great and strong;Men who for truth and honors sakeStand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep,Who dare while others flyThey build a nations pillars deepAnd lift them to the sky.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hate fishing, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to hike when you can get in the car and drive.

Joseph Barbera

I am no romantic glorifier of the Spanish woman, nor did I ever think of a casual piece as anything much other than a casual piece in any country. But when I am with Maria I love her so that I feel, literally, as though I would die and I never believed in that or thought that it could happen.

Ernest Hemingway

From year to year, and from age to age, we see [biologists] at work, adding no doubt much to the unknown, and advancing many important interests, but, at the same time, doing little for the establishment of comprehensive views of nature. Experiments in however narrow a walk, facts of whatever minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies; all beyond is regarded with suspicion and distrust.

Robert Chambers

Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from one pattern to another: a potential translation in which narrative becomes parable and the once upon a time comes to stand for some renascent truth. This approach applies to all the incidents of everyday life: the phrase in the newspaper, the endearing or infuriating game of a toddler, the misunderstanding at the office. Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

Mary Catherine Bateson

Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years, the MP3-playing alarm clock, I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning.

Rob Sheffield

I came to realize that exaggerated concern about what others are doing can be foolish. It can paralyze effort, and stifle a good idea. One finds that in the history of science almost every problem has been worked out by someone else. This should not discourage anyone from pursuing his own path.

Theodore von Kármán

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

Aldous Huxley

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!

William Hazlitt