...The bird of paradise alights only on the hand that does not grasp...
-John Berry
Resolve to be thyself: and know that he
who finds himself, loses his misery.
-Matthew Arnold 1852
...It is graceful in a man to think and speak with propriety, to act
with deliberation, and in every occurence in life to find out and
persevere in the truth...
-Cicero
...For one human being to love another...the work for which all other
work is but preparation...
-Maria Rilke 1904
...We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act,
but a habit...
-Aristotle
...The criterion of true beauty is, that it increases on examination;
if false, that it lessens. There is therefore, something in true beauty
that corresponds with right reason...
-F.Greville
Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things.
nor opposites at all without opposites.
-Plato
...Simply the thing I am shall make me live... 
-William Shakespeare
...What happens to all our 'good talks' with those we love, and how
can we hope to remember the tiniest fragment of them...it is these
that would reveal us; it is there that we are to be found...
-Julian Green
...Not a day passes over this earth but men and women of note do great
deeds, speak great words and suffer noble sorrows...
-Charles Reed
...What is difficulty? Only a word indicating the degree of strength
requisite for accomplishing particular objects; a mere notice of the
necessity of exertion...
-Warren
His hope is trecherous only whose love dies
With beauty, which is varying every hour;
But in chaste hearts uninfluenced by the power
Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower,
That breathes on earth the air of paradise.
-M.Buonarroti
...The secret of the heart-a thing personal and intimate-being
expressed, stated perhaps with diffidence, turns out to be the
great lamp of truth, an axis on which human life turns, and has
ever turned...
-John Chapman
...Life is now...this day, this hour...and is probably the only
experience of the kind one is to have...
-Charles Flandrau
...We must become cheerful, ready to receive things much greater than
ourselves...we must, in one word, be capable of admiration...
-Don Vonier
...It is in the matter of knowledge that a man is most haunted with a
sense of inevitable limitation...
-Joseph Farrell
...Man...must rule the empire of himself...
-Percy Shelley
...They are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having
the clearest sense of both the pains and pleasures of life, do
not on that account shrink from danger...
-Thucydides ~400 B.C.
...He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true
poet, though he has never written a line in all his life...
-George Sand 1851
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
And therefore is wing'd cupid painted blind.
Nor hath love's mind of any judgement taste.
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is love said to be a child.
Because, in choice, he is so oft beguiled.
-William Shakespeare
... Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the
marble and the sculptor...
-Dr. Alexis Carrel
...Innocence always calls mutely for protection...wandering the world,
meaning no harm...
-Graham Greene
...Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if
no birds sang except those that sang best...
-Henry Van Dyke
...The perception of beauty is a moral test...
-Henry David Thoreau
...Happiness is not perfected until it is shared...
-Jane Porter
...To be nobody-but-myself-in a world which is doing its best, night and
day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest battle which
any human can fight, and never stop fighting...
-E.E. Cummings 1958
To see the world in a grain of sand,
and heaven in a wildflower;
to hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour-
is inspiration.
-William Blake
...The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his
happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things...
-Epictetus
...Courage is an everyday thing. When we look reality sqaurely in the
eye and refuse to back away from our awareness, we are living courage...
-Anonymous
What is uttered from the heart alone 
Will win the hearts of others to your own.
-Johann Von Goethe 1808
...Deeper and deeper into Time's endless tunnel, does the winged soul,
like a night-hawk, wend her wild way; and finds eternities before and
behind; and her last limit is her everlasting beginning...
-Herman Melville 1849
...No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes
tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober
probability...
-Samuel Johnson
...There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in
a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him, understood
him, interested ourself in his welfare. At these moments something fine
and spiritual passes between two friends. These moments are the moments
worth living...
-Don Marquis
