I am a practical girl, and a life is only so long. It should be spent in as much peace and good eating and good reading as possible and no undue excitement. That is all I am after.

Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.

Marcus Aurelius

I missed jazz, kind of. And by the time I came to it in life, it was too intimidating to enjoy thoroughly.

Warren Zevon

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He descended a bit more and shouted to a man on the ground, Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am.The man on the ground below replied, You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.You must be a sponsor, said the balloonist.I am, replied the man, how did you know?Well, answered the balloonist, everything you told me, I believe, is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've probably delayed my trip.Well, said the man on the ground, you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect other people to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault.

Anon., A Sponsor

I want babies. I think I'll be a great dad.

Oliver Hudson

The successful man is prosperous, because he has developed ninety-five percent of his ability. The failure is poor, because only five percent of his natural talents have been utilized.

Charles E. Popplestone

More than anything, I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someonewho might have loved you back but can't due to deadness, and then I leaned forward, my forehead against the back of Takumi's headrest, and Icried, whimpering, and I didn't even feel sadness so much as pain.

John Green

Personally, I think four is the perfect number of children for our particular family. Four is enough to create the frenzied cacophony that my husband and I find so joyful.

Ayelet Waldman

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

Mark Twain

There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.

John Steinbeck

By these things examine thyself. By whose rules am I acting; in whose name; in whose strength; in whose glory? What faith, humility, self-denial, and love of God and to man have there been in all my actions?

Jackie Mason

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

H. L. Mencken

The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man who has a few friends, or one who has a dozen (if there be any one so wealthy on this earth), cannot forget on how precarious a base his happiness reposes; and how by a stroke or two of fate --a death, a few light words, a piece of stamped paper, a woman's bright eyes --he may be left, in a month, destitute of all.

Robert Louis Stevenson