A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.

If you force yourself to smile, within a couple minutes, you feel happy.

Dean Norris

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.

Winston Churchill

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

Terry Pratchett

Once you turn forty...the whole world is water off a duck's back. Once you turn forty you realize that life is there to be wasted.

Geoff Dyer

The will is never free -- it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car -- it can't steer.

Joyce Cary

Irony is the hygiene of the mind.

Elizabeth Bibesco

Humility is attentive patience.

Simone Weil

You know, the media and politicians are always gonna be in a bit of tension with one another and probably most of the time that's healthy and indeed even creative. But it's where - it's really when news organisations are used as kind of instruments of politics that it gets tricky.

Tony Blair

You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.

Henry David Thoreau

When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.

Albert Hofmann

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

Alexander Pope

A market is the combined behavior of thousands of people responding to information, misinformation and whim.

Kenneth Chang