Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.

Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.

Don Marquis

I like movies about failing.

Albert Brooks

I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.

Andrew Bird

When I approach a child He inspires in me two sentiments:Tenderness for what he is,And respect for what he may become.Chaque enfant r

Louis Pasteur

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I say there is not more happiness for me than the freedom of my Homeland.

Islom Karimov

Instead of starry-eyed worship of grand illusions, the mature citizen admires and idealizes proven values. He reveres, among other things, certain time-honored virtues and the people who practice them, especially the personal ideals of honesty, integrity, self-reliance, courage, persistence and dependability; the political ideals of individual liberty, the rights of property and contract, and the rule of law; and the ethical ideals of mutuality, decency and charity, among others.

Lyle H. Jr. Rossiter

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own case and deciding in its own favour would be rather simple minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged: or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite.

C.S. Lewis

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

David Hare

Experience by itself proves nothing. Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it.

C.S. Lewis