Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

[T]he hyphenation question is, and always has been and will be, different for English immigrants. One can be an Italian-American, a Greek-American, an Irish-American and so forth. (Jews for some reason prefer the words the other way around, as in 'American Jewish Congress' or 'American Jewish Committee.') And any of those groups can and does have a 'national day' parade on Fifth Avenue in New York. But there is no such thing as an 'English-American' let alone a 'British-American,' and one can only boggle at the idea of what, if we did exist, our national day parade on Fifth Avenue might look like. One can, though, be an Englishman in America. There is a culture, even a literature, possibly a language, and certainly a diplomatic and military relationship, that can accurately be termed 'Anglo-American.' But something in the very landscape and mapping of America, with seven eastern seaboard states named for English monarchs or aristocrats and countless hamlets and cities replicated from counties and shires across the Atlantic, that makes hyphenation redundant. Hyphenation if one may be blunt is for latecomers.

Christopher Hitchens

Daring is not safe against daring men.

Ovid

O friend, my bosom said,Through thee alone the sky is arched.Through thee the rose is red;All things through thee take nobler form,And look beyond the earth,The mill-round of our fate appearsA sun-path in thy worth.Me too thy nobleness has taughtTo master my despair;The fountains of my hidden lifeAre through thy friendship fair.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Fir

Childhood is a disease -- a sickness that you grow out of.

William Golding

A twenty-one-year-old writer is likely to be inhibited by a lack of usable experience. Childhood and adolescence were something I knew.

Ian Mcewan

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

G. K. Chesterton

And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.

Terry Pratchett

According to the U.S. Census, the most common reason people give for not voting is that they were too busy or had conflicting work or school schedules.

Jeff Miller

People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.

Alexei Sayle

Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.

Charles Caleb Colton

Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions.

Jodi Picoult

I wasn't disappointed. My expectations had been met.

John Green