Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.

However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.

Ivan Turgenev

If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

Dale Carnegie

An ordinary man away from home giving advice.

Oscar Wilde

To become a thoroughly good man is the best prescription for keeping a sound mind and a sound body.

Francis Bowen

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way

Henry David Thoreau

Many have quarreled about religion that never practiced it

Benjamin Franklin

I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

Gaston Bachelard

He'd never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occasion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he'd found it he'd be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people - thoughtless, feckless people - would call an adventure. And he'd be forced to visit many strange lands and meet exotic and colourful people, although not for very long because usually he'd be running. He'd seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He'd been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day.

Terry Pratchett

As novices, we think we're entirely responsible for the way people treat us. I have long since learned that we are responsible only for the way we treat people.

Rose Wilder Lane

The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I'm tired. I have been tired for decades. I am tired in the morning and I am tired while becalmed in the slough of the afternoon, and I am tired in the evening, except right when I try to go to sleep.

Susan Orlean

I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for.

Angelina Grimke

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

Henri Nouwen