Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius.

Anna Pavlova

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Sir Winston Churchill

There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations.

Orson Scott Card

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Michel de Montaigne

Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.

Thornton Wilder

Your greatest asset is your earning ability. Your greatest resource is your time.

Brian Tracy

This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

Lord (George Gordon) Byron

Acknowledgment -- If you wish your merit to be known, acknowledge that of other people.

Source Unknown

By the fourth grade, I graduated to an erector set and spent many happy hours constructing devices of unknown purpose where the main design criterion was to maximize the number of moving parts and overall size.

Steven Chu

Most fools think they are only ignorant.

Benjamin Franklin

Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.

George Saunders

I didn't think it was fair to my music to label me as the daughter of somebody - I didn't think it described me very well and I didn't think it had anything to do with my music.

Norah Jones