"Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way."
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them."
— Flannery O'Connor

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
— Douglas Adams

"I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge."
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

"To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness."
— Flannery O'Connor

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look."
— Flannery O'Connor

"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking..."
— Leo Tolstoy

"The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience."
— Flannery O'Connor

"There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself."
— Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose)

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
— Miss Piggy

"Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you."
— Flannery O'Connor

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."
— Mother Teresa

"All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"When you finally accept that you're a complete dork, your life gets easier. No sense in trying to be cool."
— Reese Witherspoon

"There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence."
— Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose)

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
— T.H. White (The Once and Future King)

"Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system."
— Flannery O'Connor

"I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. "
— Bertrand Russell

"Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one."
— Flannery O'Connor

"She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
— Flannery O'Connor (A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories)

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."
— Elbert Hubbard

"If you want to be happy, be."
— Leo Tolstoy

"Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it."
— Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose)

"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source."
— Leo Tolstoy

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
— Flannery O'Connor

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts."
— C.S. Lewis

"...be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be."
— Henry David Thoreau

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
— C.S. Lewis

"He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise."
— Henry David Thoreau

"There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything; by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius."
— Vladimir Nabokov

"The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men."
— Henry David Thoreau

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
— Abraham Lincoln

"Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators."
— Abraham Lincoln

"The extraordinary mystique of hers made you think she lived on rose petals and listened to nothing but Mozart, but it wasn't true. She was quite funny and ribald. She could tell a dirty joke. She played charades with a great sense of fun and vulgarity, and she could be quite bitchy."
— Andre Previn

"I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst. "
— Vladimir Nabokov

"I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise."
— Abraham Lincoln

"public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
— Henry David Thoreau

"I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel."
— Audrey Hepburn

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things."
— Winston S. Churchill

"Since the world has existed, there has been injustice. But it is one world, the more so as it becomes smaller, more accessible. There is just no question that there is more obligation that those who have should give to those who have nothing."
— Audrey Hepburn

"It's not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always."
— Henry David Thoreau

"I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true."
— Audrey Hepburn

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen

"I'm an introvert...I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees,flowers,the sky."
— Audrey Hepburn

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)