It was the upward-reaching and fathomlessly hungering, heart-breaking love for the beauty of the world at its most beautiful, and, beyond that, for that beauty east of the sun and west of the moon which is past the reach of all but our most desperate desiring and is finally the beauty of Beauty itself, of Being itself and what lies at the heart of Being.

Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty.

Ron Paul

Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind you that these things happen and that in life we are also in the midst of death.

Jane Smiley

The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.

Jonathan Lethem

When I do count the clock that tells the time,And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;When I behold the violet past prime,And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;When lofty trees I see barren of leavesWhich erst from heat did canopy the herd,And summer's green all girded up in sheavesBorne on the bier with white and bristly beard,Then of thy beauty do I question make,That thou among the wastes of time must go,Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsakeAnd die as fast as they see others grow;And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defenceSave breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

William Shakespeare

I like spending time at home. In Paris, people drop by and have a bite to eat, or they drop by and watch Friends on TV. I take my dog to the office there, and I walk to work sometimes.

Marc Jacobs

Be an optimist -- at least until they start moving animals in pairs to Cape Canaveral.

Source Unknown

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed ... The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

Abigail Adams, letter to her son

Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

Jonathan Sacks

There are a lot of impractical things about owning a Porsche. But they're all offset by the driving experience. It really is unique. Lamborghinis and Ferraris come close. And they are more powerful, but they don't handle like a Porsche.

Kevin O'Leary

All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, by the year 2000, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors.

David R. Brower

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Henry David Thoreau

It's been a rough day. I got up this morning...put on a shirt and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom!

Rodney Dangerfield