At this time when I turn 50, because so there's many of my friends and family who didn't get to see 50-years-old, and so, I'm celebrating for them too.

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.

Walt Whitman

I spent millons of years in the worldof inorganic thingsas a star, as a rock...Then I died and became a plant--Forgetting my former existencebecause of its othernessThen I died and became an animal--Forgetting my life as a plantexcept for inclinations in the seasonof spring and sweet herbs--like the inclination of babestoward their mother's breastThen I died and became a humanMy intelligence ripened, awakeningfrom greed and self-seekingto become wise and knowingI behold a hundred thousandintelligences most marvelousand remember my former statesand inclinationsAnd when I die againI will soar past the angelsto places I cannot imagineNow, what have I ever lost by dying?

Rumi, What Have I Ever Lost By D

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.

Henry David Thoreau

When you look good, you feel good. Confidence with what you're wearing is very important. If you feel good, you will always perform your best without worrying about anything.

Maria Sharapova

Money in the bank is like toothpaste in the tube. Easy to take out, hard to put back.

Earl Wilson

Oratory is the art of making deep noises form the chest sound like important massages from the brain.

H. L. Phillips

The fish is my friend too...I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky; he thought

Ernest Hemingway

What I wanted to do and what I needed to do was something entirely different, and through reading Roussel I learned that I could do what I wanted all on my own and that I didn't have to rely on what had actually happened in my somewhat limited life and reading.

Harry Mathews

The principles underlying propaganda are extremely simple. Find some common desire, some widespread unconscious fear or anxiety; think out some way to relate this wish or fear to the product you have to sell; then build a bridge of verbal or pictorial symbols over which your customer can pass from fact to compensatory dream, and from the dream to the illusion that your product, when purchased, will make the dream come true. They are selling hope. We no longer buy oranges, we buy vitality. We do not just buy an auto, we buy prestige. And so with all the rest. In toothpaste, for example, we buy not a mere cleanser and antiseptic, but release from the fear of being sexually repulsive. In vodka and whisky we are not buying a protoplasmic poison which in small doses, may depress the nervous system in a psychologically valuable way; we are buying friendliness and good fellowship, the warmth of Dingley Dell and the brilliance of the Mermaid Tavern. With our laxatives we buy the health of a Greek god. With the monthly best seller we acquire culture, the envy of our less literate neighbors and the respect of the sophisticated. In every case the motivation analyst has found some deep-seated wish or fear, whose energy can be used to move the customer to part with cash and so, indirectly, to turn the wheels of industry.

Aldous Huxley

Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.

Mahatma Gandhi

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

James Baldwin

There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change.

Robert Louis Stevenson