If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers.

I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.

Douglas MacArthur

We'll try to include Iraqi officers in our staffs. We will do everything we can to empower Iraqi security forces to stand up on their own and operate where they can alone.

John Abizaid

The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head.

William Butler Yeats

France is delighted at this new opportunity to show the world that when one has the will one can succeed in joining peoples who have been brought close by history.

Francois Mitterrand

Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.

Henry David Thoreau

The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.

E. O. Wilson

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.

Eugene McCarthy

My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.

Leo Tolstoy

....Then he felt quite ashamed, and hid his head under his wing; for he did not know what to do, he was so happy, and yet not at all proud. He had been persecuted and despised for his ugliness, and now he heard them say he was the most beautiful of all the birds. Even the elder-tree bent down its bows into the water before him, and the sun shone warm and bright. He would never became vain or conceited, and would always remembered how it felt to be despised and teased, and he was very sorry for all the creatures who are so treated merely because they are different from those around them. Then he rustled his feathers, curved his slender neck, and cried joyfully, from the depths of his heart,

Hans Christian Andersen, The Ugl

A garden must be looked into, and dressed as the body.

George Herbert

The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing.

Elizabeth Bishop

When you first have a baby your life doesn't change. I mean, you have a little less sleep and you drag these cuddly things around you and it's just amazing. But you still get to be you. Once they get to, like, five, six and school and it starts to get, like, 'Wow, they got real problems. They're my responsibility.' Oh my God. That is overwhelming.

Gwen Stefani