"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." Mark Twain

"Success isn't the result of spontaneous combustion. You must learn to set yourself on fire." Arnold H. Glasgow

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

"Do you know how cloying love can be, Derfel? I don't want to be worshipped, I don't want every whim granted; I want to feel there's something biting back." Guinevere, in the novel "Excalibur"

"Imagination rules the world." Napoleon Bonaparte

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

"Far better it is to dare mighty things than to take rank with those spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory or defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

"Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong." Leo Roskin

"The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just." Abraham Lincoln

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Thomas Edison

"Out of respect for the things that I was never destined to do, I have learned that my strengths are a result of my weaknesses, my success is due to my failures, and my style is directly related to my limitations." Billy Joel

"No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night." Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz survivor

"It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Whatever you do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." Goethe

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover..." Mark Twain

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." Saint Augustine de Hippo

"Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all. For now you are traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be."     Meg Cabot, "The Princess Diaries"

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."     Helen Keller

"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander Time; for that's the stuff that Life is made of."     Benjamin Franklin

"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names."     Chinese proverb

"My grandmother is 92 years old. She lives alone and mows her own lawn. She played on a bowling league until she was 90. Today she cheers on the local basketball team and bakes her own bread. She shows me that no trial is too hard to handle, that joy is in the small things, that getting more just makes you want more, and that we should all just keep moving."     Dixie Dunn, in the August 2004 issue of Real Simple

"The brave are simply those with the clearest vision of what is before them - glory and danger alike, and, notwithstanding, go out to meet it."       Hugh Jackman in Kate & Leopold

"Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."       Winston Churchill

"Men say they love independence in a woman, but they don't waste a second demolishing it brick by brick."       Candice Bergen

"Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness."         Edward Stanley

"When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is!"         Dr. Iannis to his daughter Pelagia in Captain Corelli's Mandolin

"To fight fear, act. To increase fear - wait, put off postpone."         David Joseph Schwartz

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."       Virginia Woolf

"The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever."     Noah Calhoun, in the movie The Notebook

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not."         Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Support what is right, oppose what is wrong; what you think, speak; try to satisfy yourself, and not others; and if you are unpopular, you will at least be respected; popularity lasts but a day, respect will descend as an heritage to your children."       TC Haliburton, 1838, in the novel Sam Slick

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."       William Pitt

"Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse."         Nigerian proverb

"Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart."       Eric Hoffer

"The most complete revenge is not to imitate the aggressor."       Marcus Aurelius

"Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."       Ralph Waldo Emerson

"And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in. Lester And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I am talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry. You will someday.       Ricky Fitts and Lester Burnham in the movie American Beauty.

"He who truly knows has no occasion to shout."       Leonardo da Vinci

"For everything that lives is holy. Life delights in life."       William Blake

  "Barn's burnt down -
    now
  I can see the moon."
            Mizuta Masahide. In 1688, Masahide's house was burn down, prompting him to write his most famous haiku.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."       Friedrich Nietzsche

“Unremarkable lives are marked by the fear of not looking capable when trying something new.”           Epictetus

“Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”           Pope John Paul II