Wasn't marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded? Wasn't it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt?

...by association with natures enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the 'Big Man' described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China's first romanticists, we 'live in heaven and earth as our house.'

Lin Yutang, The Importance of Li

There is no school of philosophy that approaches ordinary common sense.

Michael Lipsey

Peace as a goal is an ideal which will not be contested by any government or nation, not even the most belligerent.

Aung San Suu Kyi

I really liked the snake that breaks out of the cage in the beginning of the movie. I saw it in real life, and it was really cool. Really big and fat. The owls are cool as well, but you can't really pet them.

Tom Felton

I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish - just think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language; it's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will.

George Bernard Shaw

The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own.

C.S. Lewis

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

Albert Camus

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Rutger Hauer

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Leonardo da Vinci

Shit, money, and the World, the three American truths, powering the American mobility, claimed the Slothrops, clasped them for good to the country's fate. But they did not prosper... about all they did was persist

Thomas Pynchon

Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.

Lewis Mumford