The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. 

~ Victor Hugo, novelist and dramatist (26 Feb 1802-1885) 

In the cellars of the night, when the mind starts moving around old trunks of bad times, the pain of this and the shame of that, the memory of a small boldness is a hand to hold. 

~ John Leonard, critic (25 Feb 1939-2008) 

Come, live in my heart and pay no rent. 

~ Samuel Lover, songwriter, composer, novelist, and artist (24 Feb 1797-1868) 

Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves. 

~ Robert Neelly Bellah, sociologist and author (23 Feb 1927-2013) 

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped. 

~ Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (22 Feb 1788-1860) 

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book. 

~ Carson McCullers, writer (19 Feb 1917-1967) 

What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams. 

~ Nikos Kazantzakis, poet and novelist (18 Feb 1883-1957) 

A man is known by the company he keeps. A company is known by the men it keeps. 

~ Thomas J. Watson, businessman (17 Feb 1874-1956) 

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. 

~ Henry Adams, historian and teacher (16 Feb 1838-1918) 

The question is not can they reason? Nor can they talk? But can they suffer? 

~ Jeremy Bentham, jurist and philosopher (15 Feb 1748-1832) 

I see too plainly custom forms us all. Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed belief, are consequences of our place of birth. 

~ Aaron Hill, dramatist and writer (10 Feb 1685-1750) 

He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. 

~ Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (9 Feb 1737-1809) 

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. 

~ John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (8 Feb 1819-1900) 

The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

~ Adlai Stevenson, governor, ambassador (5 Feb 1900-1965) 

The mark of the educated man is not in his boast that he has built his mountain of facts and stood on the top of it, but in his admission that there may be other peaks in the same range with men on the top of them, and that, though their views of the landscape may be different from his, they are nonetheless legitimate. 

~ E.J. Pratt, poet (4 Feb 1882-1964) 

Jobs are like going to church: it's nice once or twice a year to sing along and eat something and all that, but unless you really believe there's something holy going on, it gets to be a drag going in every single week. 

~ Thomas Michael Disch, science fiction author and poet (2 Feb 1940-2008)

When you turn the corner 

And you run into yourself

Then you know that you have turned

All the corners that are left. 

~ Langston Hughes, poet and novelist (1 Feb 1902-1967) 

Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something. 

~ Anton Chekhov, short-story writer and dramatist (29 Jan 1860-1904) 

A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed if he always remains in the same place. 

~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer and musician (27 Jan 1756-1791)