The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains.

If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make... So-- as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of hour behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down, one by one, then you can always say, look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to... Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society.

Orson Scott Card

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.

C. W. Ceran

There are a handful of people whom money won't spoil, and we all count ourselves among them.

Mignon McLaughlin

War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.

George Orwell

It was considered at the time a striking proof of virtue in the young king that he was sorry for his father's death;but, as common subjects have that virtue too, sometimes, we will say no more about it.

Charles Dickens

I do Yoga. I'd like to say I do it every morning, but I don't, I just don't have the time.

Radha Mitchell

'Tis all a Checker-board of Nights and days where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays, and one by one back in the Closet lays.

Omar Khayyam

That's what so many people didn't understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake world, where nothing lasted, and things were real only to the extent they harmed or helped people inside their homes.

Orson Scott Card

I'm open to everything. When you start to criticize the times you live in, your time is over.

Karl Lagerfeld

But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine.

Emma Forrest

My career is really important to me, but there have to be other great, important things in your life besides work.

Katherine Heigl