The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

Lyndon B. Johnson

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

Thich Nhat Hanh

I've been more or less vegetarian for about 40 years. Health diet really helps. I do meditation every day, and either yoga or sport several times a week.

John McLaughlin

I speak of love that comes to mind:The moon is faithful, although blind;She moves in thought she cannot speak.Perfect care has made her bleak.I never dreamed the sea so deep,The earth so dark; so long my sleep,I have become another child.I wake to see the world go wild.

Allen Ginsberg, An Eastern Balla

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

Peter Drucker

It is an immense loss to have all robust and sustaining expletives refined away from one! At. moments of trial refinement is a feeble reed to lean upon.

Alice James

The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is in love, laughter, and work.

Elbert Hubbard

I wake up every morning in a cold sweat, regardless of how well things went the day before. And put that I said that in a somewhat but not completely tongue-in-cheek way.

Harvey Pekar

The double hundred Fowler hit in the Madras Test was an absolute beauty.

David Gower

I envy the sensibility in Europe, appreciating beauty in women as they age. I'm going to go that way. I might dye my gray hair for a bit, but beyond that the buck stops. I'm not having any work done.

Rachel Bilson

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

Soren Kierkegaard

We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of wrath, past and to come.

Ralph Waldo Emerson