For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my 'race,' unless I was permitted to put 'human.' The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put 'white,' which is not even a color let alone a 'race,' and I sternly declined to put 'Caucasian,' which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King's campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you 'black.

Wisdom is not acquired save as the result of investigation.

Sara Teasdale

Bina, thank you. Bina, listen, this guy. His name wasn't Lasker. This guy-'She puts a hand to his mouth. She has not touched him in three years. It probably would be too much to say that he feels the darkness lift at the touch of her fingertips against his lips. But it shivers, and light bleeds in among the cracks.

Michael Chabon

The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut-out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,honest work, which you intend getting done.

Thomas Carlyle

People always ask me if I'm going to stop modeling because I have started an acting career. I hope to continue to model for years to come.

Tyra Banks

I'm probably the least flexible athlete you'll find. When it comes to yoga, I can't get in the positions and I can't hold them. You have to be pretty flexible to do it. Once you get certain positions, you have to have the core strength to hold those positions. It's a pretty good workout.

Steve Blake

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Mark Twain

It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions... The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.

Mark Twain

There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young,When the buds of April blossomed, and the birds of spring-time sung!The gardens brightest glories by summer suns are nursed,But oh, the sweet, sweet violets, the flowers that opened first!There is no place like the old place, where you and I were born,Where we lifted first our eyelids on the splendors of the mornFrom the milk-white breast that warmed us, from the clinging arms that bore,Where the dear eyes glistened o'er us that will look on us no more!There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning days,No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise:Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold;But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.There is no love like the old love, that we courted in our pride;Though our leaves are falling, falling, and were fading side by side,There are blossoms all around us with the colors of our dawn,And we live in borrowed sunshine when the day-star is withdrawn.There are no times like the old times, they shall never be forgot!There is no place like the old place, keep green the dear old spot!There are no friends like our old friends, may Heaven prolong their lives!There are no loves like our old loves, God bless our loving wives!

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The only legitimate artists in England are the architects.

Benjamin Haydon

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk we must act big.

Theodore Roosevelt

Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Happiness is lost by criticizing it; sorrow by accepting it.

Ambrose Bierce