His purity was too great, his aspiration too high for this poor, miserable world! His great soul is now only enjoying that for which it was worthy!

I worked half my life to be an overnight success, and still it took me by surprise.

Jessica Savitch

Where there is great love, there are always wishes.

Willa Cather

In athletics there's always been a willingness to cheat if it looks like you're not cheating. I think that's just a quirk of human nature.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.You appear to be astonished, he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.To forget it!You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.But the Solar System! I protested.What the deuce is it to me? he interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.This is Watson describing one of his earliest conversations with Sherlock Holmeshttp://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DoyScar.html

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study

I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.

Abraham Lincoln

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

Karen Thompson Walker

To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.

Wendell Berry

Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.

Herbert Spencer

I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.

Arthur Rimbaud

Our loyalty is due entirely to the United States. It is due to the President only and exactly to the degree in which he efficiently serves the United States. It is our duty to support him when he serves the United States well. It is our duty to oppose him when he serves it badly. This is true about Mr. Wilson now and it has been true about all our Presidents in the past. It is our duty at all times to tell the truth about the President and about every one else, save in the cases where to tell the truth at the moment would benefit the public enemy.

Theodore Roosevelt

Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity.

Nadine Gordimer

The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.

Abraham Lincoln