Please God, said the embryo, I think that You made me in the shape which I now have for reasons best known to Yourselves, and that it would be rude to change. If I am to have my choice I will stay as I am. I will not alter any of the parts which You have made for me, for other and doubtless inferior tools, and I will stay a defenceless embryo all my life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the wood, iron, and other materials which You have seen fit to put before me. If I want a boat I will try to construct it out of trees, and if I want to fly, I will put together a chariot to do it for me.

It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

Kin Hubbard

Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is, with thoughts of what may be.

John Dryden

The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain.

Susan B. Anthony

Do we not realize that self respect comes with self reliance?

Abdul Kalam

Some of our struggles involve making decisions, while others are a result of the decisions we have made. Some of our struggles result from choices others make that affect our lives. We cannot always control everything that happens to us in this life, but we can control how we respond. Many struggles come as problems and pressures that sometimes cause pain. Others come as temptations, trials, and tribulations.

L. Lionel Kendrick

Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.

Frank A. Clark

Well, you know, too much democracy is a sort of sad thing.

Ann Richards

Those of us who are pro-life should demand more from Congress.

Justin Amash

I have a grim outlook on the world, and in particular on humanity. Spent years denying it, but I am very misanthropic. And I live alone on a mountain for a reason.

Caleb Carr

Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion.

James Joyce

The quality of life is more important than life itself.

Alexis Carrel

Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imaginedfuture, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love ora passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convincedthat even the smallest particle of the surrounding world wascharged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, andone would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by thehigh, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, somany and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like firefliesin the perfumed heat of summer night.

Mark Strand