The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding, and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

~  Novelist and Nobel laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968).

Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions. 

~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., novelist (1922-2007)

There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. 

~ Pierre Bayle, philosopher and writer (1647-1706)

Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer. 

~ Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions. 

~ Frank Lloyd Wright, architect (1867-1959)

Elvira always lied first to herself before she lied to anybody else, since this gave her a conviction of moral honesty. 

~ Phyllis Bottome, novelist (1884-1963)

The epitaph that I would write for history would say: I conceal nothing. It is not enough not to lie. One should strive not to lie in a negative sense by remaining silent. 

~ Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

We are far more concerned about the desecration of the flag than we are about the desecration of our land.  

~ Wendell Berry, farmer and author (b. 1934)

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. 

~ Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)

Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you. 

~ Annie Dillard, author (b. 1945)

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to -- if there are no doors or windows -- he walks through a wall. 

~ Bernard Malamud, novelist and short-story writer (1914-1986)

Men are the devils of the earth and the animals are its tormented souls. 

~ Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)

When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist. 

~ Helder Camara, archbishop (1909-1999)

Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage.  ~ Ambrose Bierce, author and editor (1842-1914)

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. 

~ Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

Since my house burned down  , I now own a better view , of the rising moon. 

~ Mizuta Masahide, poet and samurai (1657-1723)

The arrow has to draw back to fly ahead.  ~ Proverb

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true. 

~ H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy. 

~ Fran Lebowitz, author (b. 1950)

The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position. 

~ Christine Stevens, activist (1918-2002)

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. 

~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008)

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings. 

~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, psychiatrist and author (1926-2004)