Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

Flannery O'Connor

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.

Lucretius

Andy Warhol made fame more famous.

Fran Lebowitz

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

William James

Man is not a Yahoo, but he is rather like a Yahoo and needs to be reminded of it from time to time.

George Orwell

We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

Mark Twain

For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms.

Arthur Rimbaud

Worse there cannot be a better, I believe, there may be, by giving energy to the capital and skill of the country to produce exports, by increasing which, alone, can we flatter ourselves with the prospect of finding employment for that part of our population now unemployed.

Joseph Hume

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.

Thomas Jefferson

I believe in love, children and being a good person.

Leighton Meester

A rocky vineyard does not need a prayer, but a pick axe.

American Indian Proverb, Navajo

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

Patrick Henry