Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron)

For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

Fame is the thirst of youth.

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away.

What's drinking?
A mere pause from thinking!

The "good old times" — all times when old are good —
Are gone.

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge.

But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life - and if Virtue is not its own reward I don't know any other stipend annexed to it.

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.

Friendship is Love without his wings!

Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.

He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly?

Louisa May Alcott

Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling.

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

I am angry nearly every day of my life, but I have learned not to show it; and I still try to hope not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do it.

Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.

Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.

Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know.

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

Father asked us what was God's noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.

Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say No when they mean Yes, and drive a man out of his wits for the fun of it.

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe.

Accordingly, since nothing prevents the earth from moving, I suggest that we should now consider also whether several motions suit it, so that it can be regarded as one of the planets. For, it is not the center of all the revolutions.

For I am not so enamored of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavor to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned.

Not a few other very eminent and scholarly men made the same request, urging that I should no longer through fear refuse to give out my work for the common benefit of students of Mathematics.

Of all things visible, the highest is the heaven of the fixed stars.

Pouring forth its seas everywhere, then, the ocean envelops the earth and fills its deeper chasms.

So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it.

The earth also is spherical, since it presses upon its center from every direction.

The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle.

The massive bulk of the earth does indeed shrink to insignificance in comparison with the size of the heavens.

Therefore I would not have it unknown to Your Holiness, the the only thing which induced me to look for another way of reckoning the movements of the heavenly bodies was that I knew that mathematicians by no means agree in their investigation thereof.

Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth.

Tom Stoppard

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead. 

A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.

Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.

Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

It's better to be quotable than to be honest.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.

George Sand

The truth is too simple: one must always get there by a complicated route.

Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.

Art is a demonstration of which nature is the proof.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.

I have no enthusiasm for nature which the slightest chill will not instantly destroy.

Life in common among people who love each other is the ideal of happiness.

James A. Michener

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.  

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.

The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

There are no insoluble problems. Only time-consuming ones.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.

I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss, but you live with that loss.

Bertolt Brecht

Let nothing be called natural
In an age of bloody confusion,
Ordered disorder, planned caprice,
And dehumanized humanity, lest all things
Be held unalterable!

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him

And the shark he has his teeth and
There they are for all to see
And Macheath he has his knife but
No one knows where it may be.

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.

Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.

Hermann von Helmholtz

Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications. But intellectual satisfaction we obtain only from a connection of the whole, just from its conformity with law.

The external work of man is of the most varied kind as regards the force or ease, the form and rapidity, of the motions used on it, and the kind of work produced.

A raised weight can produce work, but in doing so it must necessarily sink from its height, and, when it has fallen as deep as it can fall, its gravity remains as before, but it can no longer do work.

Heat can also be produced by the impact of imperfectly elastic bodies as well as by friction. This is the case, for instance, when we produce fire by striking flint against steel, or when an iron bar is worked for some time by powerful blows of the hammer.

I then endeavoured to show that it is more especially in the thorough conformity with law which natural phenomena and natural products exhibit, and in the comparative ease with which laws can be stated, that this difference exists.

Iron which is brought near a spiral of copper wire, traversed by an electrical current, becomes magnetic, and then attracts other pieces of iron, or a suitably placed steel magnet.

The law in question asserts, that the quantity of force which can be brought into action in the whole of Nature is unchangeable, and can neither be increased nor diminished.

The older view of the nature of heat was that it is a substance, very fine and imponderable indeed, but indestructible, and unchangeable in quantity, which is an essential fundamental property of all matter.

Thomas Wolfe

Life isn't boring, people are small and let life escape them.

His enemy was time. Or perhaps it was his friend. One never knows for sure.

A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing.  

 

They belonged to that futile, desolate, and forsaken horde who felt that all will be well with their lives, that all the power they lack themselves will be supplied, and all the anguish, fury, and unrest, the confusion and the dark damnation of man's soul can magically be healed if only they eat bran for breakfast.

America - it is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.

Death the last voyage, the longest, and the best.

To a future world,— inhabited, no doubt, by a less acute and understanding race of men,— all this may seem a trifle strange. If so, that will be because the world of the future will have forgotten what it was like to live in 1929.

If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know.

In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying the darkness and we know no death.

Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.

Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.

Paul Cezanne

Painting must give us the flavour of nature’s eternity.

Art has a harmony which parallels that of nature. The people who tell you that the artist is always inferior to nature are idiots! He is parallel to it.

I want to express myself clearly when I paint. In people who feign ignorance there is a kind of barbarism even more detestable than the academic kind: it’s no longer possible to be ignorant today.

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet. That’s why color appears so entirely dramatic, to true painters.

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.

I am the primitive of the method I have invented.

I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.

I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.

I have sworn to die painting.

I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.

I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me.