"Theresa Osborne: If some lives form a perfect circle, other take shape in ways we cannot predict or always understand. Loss has been part of my journey. But it has also shown me what is precious. So has love for which I can only be grateful. "
— Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle)

"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."
— Plato

"
Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.
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"
— Edmond De Goncourt

"You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind."
— Dale Carnegie

"
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?


"
— Socrates (BC 469-BC 399) Greek philosopher of Athens

"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."
— e.e. cummings

"If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. "
— Niccolò Machiavelli

"it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails."
— Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince)

"…he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived."
— Niccolò Machiavelli

"Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great. "
— Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince)

"And truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and wish to do it anyway, here lies the error and the blame."
— Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince)

"A man who is used to acting in one way never changes; he must come to ruin when the times, in changing, no longer are in harmony with his ways."
— Niccolò Machiavelli (Machiavelli Niccolo : Prince)

"There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you."
— Niccolò Machiavelli (Machiavelli Niccolo : Prince)

"How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation."
— Niccolò Machiavelli

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
— Aristotle

"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."
— Aristotle

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
— Aristotle

"Happiness depends upon ourselves."
— Aristotle

"Hope is a waking dream."
— Aristotle

"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous."
— Aristotle

"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."
— Aristotle

"The Law is Reason free from Passion."
— Aristotle

"Happiness is the settling of the soul into its most appropriate spot."
— Aristotle

"Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach."
— Aristotle

"The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think."
— Aristotle

"Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny."
— Aristotle

"To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing."
— Aristotle

"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
— Aristotle

"Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet. "
— Jeremy Bentham

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
— Edmund Burke

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
— Edmund Burke

"Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting."
— Edmund Burke

"Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair."
— Edmund Burke

"A friend to all is a friend to none."
— Aristotle