Very few persons, comparatively, know how to Desire with sufficient intensity. They do not know what it is to feel and manifest that intense, eager, longing, craving, insistent, demanding, ravenous Desire which is akin to the persistent, insistent, ardent, overwhelming desire of the drowning man for a breath of air; of the shipwrecked or desert-lost man for a drink of water; of the famished man for bread and meat

I had some vague memory of visiting Canberra as a lad, when we came up with my father by car. But when I made the long train journey from Sydney to Canberra and arrived at the little stop, I did wonder slightly whether this really was the national capital.

John Henry Carver

What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours.

James Lovelock

What a man really wants is creative challenge with sufficient skills to bring him within the reach of success so that he may have the expanding joy of achievement.

Fay B. Nash

Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.

Abigail Adams

When a diplomat says yes he means perhaps; when he says perhaps he means no; when he says no he is no diplomat.

Source Unknown

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

For me, the highest level of sexual excitement is in a monogamous relationship.

Warren Beatty

And then before going back for my sophomore year, I decided to change my major to arts and sciences, and my dad cut a deal with me: He said if I'd quit school he'd pay my rent for the next three years, as if I were in school.

Sarah Silverman

Intellectuals are too sentimental for me.

Margaret Anderson

I force my eyes upward and look at Mia for the first time. She's still beautiful. Not in an obvious Vanessa LeGrande or Bryn Shraeder kind of way. In a quiet way that's always been devastating to me. Her hair, long and dark, is down now, swimming damply against her bare shoulders, which are still milky white and covered with the constellation of freckles that I used to kiss. The scar on her left shoulder, the one that used to be an angry red weld is silvery pink now. Almost like the latest rage in tattoo accessories. Almost pretty.

Gayle Forman

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

Giorgos Seferis

Every man goes down to his death bearing in his hands only that which he has given away.

Proverb