The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.

No brain is stronger than its weakest think.

Thomas L. Masson

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.

William Penn

Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.

Friedrich Von Schlegel

I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government.

Edward Norton

An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.

Constance Rourke

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Happiness does not consist in self-love.

Joseph Butler

My computer beat me at checkers, but I sure beat it at kickboxing.

Emo Philips

I refuse to step inside the ring and fight like a gladiator against my own. I'm not playing that game. Any woman who has survived a year or more of making music has my undying respect.

Shirley Manson

Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. It is love of the exaggerated.

Susan Sontag

There are definitely people I respect and I love their music, but there was never really an artist that I said, I want to be just like them, I love the way their career is going. I love their music. It wasn't really like that. I wanted to be like myself.

Hilary Duff

One of the most destructive things that's happening in modern society is that we are losing our sense of the bonds that bind people together - which can lead to nightmares of social collapse.

Alexander McCall Smith