The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.

When you suffer, think not on how you can escape suffering, but concentrate your efforts on what kind of inner moral and spiritual perfection this suffering requires.

Leo Tolstoy

In the long run we are all dead.

John Maynard Keynes

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

Stephen King

An unused life is an early death.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It needs courage to let our children go, but we are trustees and stewards and have to hand them back to life--to God. As the old saying puts it: What I gave I have. We have to love them and lose them.

Alfred Torrie

The trouble with life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time.

John Barrymore

Diplomats were invented simply to waste time.

David Lloyd George

I think I can work with any type of actor.

Ang Lee

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

David Sedaris

I felt as if I was the only person awake in a city of sleepwalkers. That's an illusion, of course. When you walk through a crowd of strangers it's next door to impossible not to imagine that they're all waxworks, but probably they're thinking just the same about you.

George Orwell

Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame, when once it is within thee.

George Herbert

in the cold you wrap me. in my uncertainty you listen. in all my joys you celebrate. at every turn you meet me with competence and grace. what a fine dance we have together.

Mary Anne Radmacher