The sleeping fox catches no poultry.

But as the Pope has a long arm, which might reach me in France, I have gone a little out of the way to tell him the plain truths contained in these pages.

Edmond About

If every one was satisfied with themselves, there would be no heroes

Mark Twain

Life is war.

Ezekiel Carsella

Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.

Henry David Thoreau

Cast aside those who liken godliness to whimsy and who try to combine their greed for wealth with their desire for a happy afterlife.

Kahlil Gibran, "Beauty"

[Patricia Greenfield] concluded that every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others. Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies has led to the widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills. We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to. But our new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of deep processing that underpins mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.

Nicholas G. Carr

When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances will fit in with them.

William Osler

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper into my ear. You are happy, they say; therefore you are called upon to give much.

Albert Schweitzer

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

Karl Kraus

There are two kinds of idiots - those who don't take action because they have received a threat, and those who think they are taking action because they have issued a threat.

Paulo Coelho

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.

Franklin P. Jones

You can't eat your friends and have them too.

Budd Schulberg