Rational, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.

I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.

Jonathan Swift

We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much natural force, perhaps, but for the rest -- blank; and the world tells us what we are to be, and shapes us by the ends it sets before us. To you it says -- Work; and to us it says -- Seem! To you it says -- As you approximate to man's highest ideal of God, as your arm is strong and your knowledge great, and the power to labor is with you, so you shall gain all that human heart desires. To us it says -- Strength shall not help you, nor knowledge, nor labor. You shall gain what men gain, but by other means. And so the world makes men and women.

Olive Schreiner

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.

Charlie McCarthy

Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.

Jodi Picoult

All I can tell you is to have the relationship that's good for you.

Cath Crowley

Even then, it hurt. The pain was always there, pulling me inside of myself, demanding to be felt. It always felt like I was waking up from the pain when something in the world outside of me suddenly required my comment or attention.

John Green

We live in the country. I'm a redneck. No, ha-ha. I live in L.A. County, but more in the hills. Not in the fancy kind! Trust me whatever you do you do not want to come to my neighborhood!

Atticus Shaffer

Japanese people have a funny habit of abbreviating names.

Shigeru Miyamoto

There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.

Robert Woodruff

They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.

Charles Caleb Colton

I am the family face flesh perishes, I live on.

Thomas Hardy

See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ... is the one fundamental treason which the scholar's mind must not allow is the bond uniting all the Oxford people in the last resort.

Dorothy L. Sayers