When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

Paradoxically, we fail to disclose ourselves to other people because we want so much to be loved. Because we feel that way we present ourselves as someone we think can be loved and accepted, and we conceal whatever would mar that image. Another reason we hide is to protect ourselves from change. . . Still another reason we don't disclose ourselves is that we were never taught how. . . Personal ambitions and economic pressures also give us powerful reasons for concealing what we really are. . . All of us hide behind the iron curtain of our public selves. . . Men hide what prevents them from seeming strong and masculine. . . Disclosure is so important (because) without it we really cannot know ourselves. Or to put it another way, we learn to deceive ourselves while we are trying to deceive others. For example, if I never express my sorrow, my love, my joy, I'll smother those feelings in myself until I almost forget they were once part of me.

Sidney Jourard

What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.

Robert Stone

I think many people can relate to that excruciating pain of love gone wrong. I'd rather have a broken arm than a broken heart.

Christie Brinkley

I never got into politics for it to be a career. It doesn't take a lot of strength to hang on. It takes a lot of strength to let go.

J. C. Watts

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here While these visions did appear...date is its entry into the Stationer's Register

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

General George Patton

In any given situation you will find only what you bring with you...

Christopher Earle

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The practice of conservation must spring from a conviction of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soil, waters, fauna, and flora, as well as people.

Aldo Leopold

I didn't fully realize it at the time, but the goal of my life was profoundly molded by this experience - to help produce, in the next generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

H. L. Mencken

You meet people in Hollywood that are famous, and you're not sure what they got famous for.

Rainn Wilson