Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty - excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable -should persist after the beauty was gone.

Nothing in the World can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan press on has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Calvin Coolidge

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.

Jose Saramago

Because at bottom, I'm interested in fear, and in courage and cowardice and these are easier to get at through fiction, where you can enter people's heads.

Kevin Patterson

Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him.

Blaise Pascal

I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel.

Giacomo Casanova

I slip from workaholic to bum real easy.

Matthew Broderick

If we did not look to marriage as the principal source of happiness, fewer marriages would end in tears.

Anthony Storr

I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.

Charles Dickens

Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day - farther and wider - and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, ch.

Patrick Henry railed against taxation without representation. He should see it with representation.

Saul Landau

Keep your sense of humor. There's enough stress in the rest of your life to let bad shots ruin a game you're supposed to enjoy.

Amy Strum Alcott

I don't think I'm beautiful. When I look in the mirror, I just see me - and, I'm pretty used to me.

Melanie Griffith