To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist knows it.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

The first reaction to truth is hatred.

Tertullian

Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week.

Maggie Kuhn

At the sound of my name, those two worlds on either side of me collide, and my lips meet his. Time ceases to exist, and so, apparently does any logic that my mind is hanging on to. Logic would say that this is insane; every other fibre of my being says it's right.

Dianna Hardy

On the other hand, all those doubts which I had felt before I entered the cottage as to whether these creatures were friend of foe, and whether Ransom were a pioneer or a dupe, had for the moment vanished. My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that he creature was what we called 'good', but I wasn't sure whether I liked 'goodness' so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.

C.S. Lewis

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

William Shakespeare

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

Orson Scott Card

Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more or their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination not to live without it.

Morton Hunt

Communists should be the first to be concerned about other people and country and the last to enjoy themselves.

Zhao Ziyang

It's always wrong to hate, but it's never wrong to love.

Lady Gaga

I think it's horrible that people have to be told. Don't smoke! Everybody knows it's bad for the health. But they have to forbid it.

Karl Lagerfeld