Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is the undoing of your strength: I am not a weak woman. I am not a little queen. And your mercy will be your undoing.

We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs inordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.

Eric Hoffer

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

Wilfred Owen

Will: 'Singing the praises of our fair city? We treat you well here, don't we, James? I doubt I'd have that kind of luck in Shanghai. What do you call us there again?'Jem: 'Yang guizi ... foreign devils.

Cassandra Clare

If you delay till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day, you overcharge the morrow with a burden which belongs not to it. You load the wheels of time, and prevent it from carrying you along smoothly. He who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows out the plan, carries on a thread which will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his affairs. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits neither of distribution nor review.

Hugh Blair

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

Thomas Carlyle

Avoid shame but do not seek glory --nothing so expensive as glory.

Sydney Smith

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.

Francis Hutcheson

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history.

Norman Borlaug

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Could a love of that magnitude die? If it was true love, could it ever die? Was there such a thing as true love?

Mary Balogh

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

Samuel Johnson