Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came to being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old.These dates are incorrect.Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760BC. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508BC.These suggestions are also incorrect.Archbishop James Usher (1580-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004BC. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004BC, at exactly 9.00 a.m., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet.

Terry Pratchett

No matter what you study, the thing that you know best is what you grew up with.

Maria Sharapova

Absence -- that common cure of love.

Miguel de Cervantes

You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.

E. O. Wilson

When pleasure interferes with business, give up business.

Proverb

Imagination disposes of everything it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

Blaise Pascal

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We know a great deal more about the causes of physical disease than we do about the causes of physical health.

M. Scott Peck

Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.

Elton Trueblood

The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.

Anna Quindlen

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

Jean-Paul Sartre

My doctor gave me six months to live, but when I couldn't pay the bill he gave me six months more.

Walter Matthau