Once the visitor was told rather repetitively that this city was the melting pot; never before in history had so many people of such varied languages, customs, colors and culinary habits lived so amicably together. Although New York remains peaceful by most standards, this self-congratulation is now less often heard, since it was discovered some years ago that racial harmony depended unduly on the willingness of the blacks (and latterly the Puerto Ricans) to do for the other races the meanest jobs at the lowest wages and then to return to live by themselves in the worst slums.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

Charles Lamb

A thousand laughing suns are in your eyes. A thousand crying stars in mine.

Ahmad Shamlou

Let the first impulse pass, wait for the second.

Baltasar Gracian

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.

Bernard Meltzer

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

Hippocrates

Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in front of a thousand elephants.

Terry Pratchett

In the field of Egyptian mathematics Professor Karpinski of the University of Michigan has long insisted that surviving mathematical papyri clearly demonstrate the Egyptians' scientific interest in pure mathematics for its own sake. I have now no doubt that Professor Karpinski is right, for the evidence of interest in pure science, as such, is perfectly conclusive in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus.

James Henry Breasted

Prudence and justice tell me that in electricity and steam there is more love for man than in chastity and abstinence from meat.

Anton Chekhov

'Tis all men's office to speak patience To those that wring under the load of sorrow; But no man's virtue nor sufficiency To be so moral when he shall endure The like himself

William Shakespeare

Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time.

Don Miguel Ruiz

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

Evelyn Waugh

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Francis Bacon