You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it.

There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.

Diane Arbus, From class lectures

Our history is not our destiny.

Alan Cohen

Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I think I'll work all my life. When you're having fun, why stop having fun?

Helen Thomas

Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.

Thomas Wolfe

By working hard, you get to play hard guilt-free.

Jim Rohn

People have often said to me, 'Surely when you are with the tramps they don't really accept you as one of themselves? Surely they notice that you are different--notice the difference of accent?' etc., etc. As a matter of fact, a fair proportion of tramps, well over a quarter I should say, notice nothing of the kind. To begin with, many people have no ear for accent and judge you entirely by your clothes. I was often struck by this fact when I was begging at back doors. Some people were obviously surprised by my 'educated' accent, others completely failed to notice it; I was dirty and ragged and that was all they saw. Again, tramps come from all parts of the British Isles and the variation in English accents is enormous. A tramp is used to hearing all kinds of accents among his mates, some of them so strange to him that he can hardly understand them, and a man from, say, Cardiff or Durham or Dublin does not necessarily know which of the south English accents is an 'educated' one. In any case men with 'educated' accents, though rare among tramps, are not unknown. But even when tramps are aware that you are of different origin from themselves, it does not necessarily alter their attitude. From their point of view all that matters is that you, like themselves, are 'on the bum'. And in that world it is not done to ask too many questions. You can tell people the history of your life if you choose, and most tramps do so on the smallest provocation, but you are under no compulsion to tell it and whatever story you tell will be accepted without question. Even a bishop could be at home among tramps if he wore the right clothes; and even if they knew he was a bishop it might not make any difference, provided that they also knew or believed that he was genuinely destitute. Once you are in that world and seemingly of it, it hardly matters what you have been in the past. It is a sort of world-within-a-world where everyone is equal, a small squalid democracy...

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan

Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.

Pierre Bonnard

Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

Conrad Hall

It's easy to like someone from a distance. But when she stopped being this amazing unattainable thing or whatever, and started being, like, just a regular girl with a weird relationship with food and frequent crankiness wh's kind of bossy--then I had to basically start liking a while different person.

John Green

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

Robert Frost