'Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence.

The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.

He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.

He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.

Have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day!

Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.

There is nothing that making men rich and strong but that which they carry inside of them. True wealth is of the heart, not of the hand.

Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heav'n itself would stoop to her.

I sat me down to watch upon a bank With ivy canopied and interwove With flaunting honeysuckle.

If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world.

If you're considered a beauty it's hard to be accepted doing anything but standing around.

Purity is an illusion. The idea of purity has been used as an excuse for calamities like honor killings, bride burnings, child molestation. Purification is genocide.

Though I feared I would have no progress when I put down the drink, [my writing] hasn't changed. The creative search, and the fragments that I collect, reflects that.

I quit acting when I was 11 because I was cast as a bouncing ball in 'Alice in Wonderland,' and I felt slighted and wounded.

If you see life as an opportunity, or if you see helping others as an opportunity, then all of a sudden you become joyous. You want to go forward.

The Congress is a power-oriented party.

I don't think racism can be eliminated in my lifetime ... or my children's or grandchildren's. But I think it's something we have to strive for. I'm going to keep working toward that day coming.

Fat people are so rarely included in visual culture that fat is perceived as a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim.