While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full and high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a strip erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first and Union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!

For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty; the Polish jimkes on their grain ships had beauty; the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty. Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all. Bourgeois life on the whole seemed to me pedantic.

KaThe Kollwitz

I've never had an intelligent conversation with a beautiful woman. But then, I've never had an intelligent conversation. Or talked to a beautiful woman.

Bauvard

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

David Hume

Truth disappears with the telling of it.

Lawrence Durrell

The shortest distance between two people is laughter.

Source Unknown

If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy; God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won t.

Hyman Rickover

Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past.

Tryon Edwards

My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty.

Andrew Cuomo

Putting a little time aside for clean fun and good humor is very necessary to relieve the tensions of our time.

Hattie McDaniel

This is Alvin Smith, said Cooper. He's a man of inestimable abilities, but only because nobody has cared enough to estimate them.

Orson Scott Card

Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.

Diogenes

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.

Thomas Jefferson