The willow is my favorite tree. I grew up near one. It's the most flexible tree in nature and nothing can break it - no wind, no elements, it can bend and withstand anything.

'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'

W. H. Auden

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Blaise Pascal

You know, there are people making a lot of money in this country who can actually afford their own health care. We are in a situation where we got a safety net in place in this country for people who frankly don't need one. We got to focus on making sure we got a safety net for those who actually need it.

Eric Cantor

The basic principle of turning ideas into big money is to seize every money building idea and work with it until the idea fits your purpose, decide on the steps needed to make it work, and then proceed to do it as soon as possible.

Duane Newcomb

Up against the corporate government, voters find themselves asked to choose between look-alike candidates from two parties vying to see who takes the marching orders from their campaign paymasters and their future employers. The money of vested interest nullifies genuine voter choice and trust.

Ralph Nader

Meditation is all about the pursuit of nothingness. It's like the ultimate rest. It's better than the best sleep you've ever had. It's a quieting of the mind. It sharpens everything, especially your appreciation of your surroundings. It keeps life fresh.

Hugh Jackman

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Charles Dickens

If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.

Daniel C. Dennett

Jesus was a brilliant Jewish stand-up comedian, a phenomenal improviser. His parables are great one-liners.

Camille Anna Paglia

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Charles Dickens

Good, capable individuals unconsciously and consciously guard and nurture themselves and their spirits every day in all sorts of choices, large and small. Just as their lives are never static, they are rarely if ever fractured. Their morals and ethics are never cut off from the whole of their evolving beings.

Donald Van de Mark

The average bright young man who is drafted hates the whole business because an army always tries to eliminate the individual differences in men.

Andy Rooney