People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit.

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.

Don't be condescending to unskilled labor. Try it for a half a day first.

It seems not to have been written. It is the quintessence of life. It is the basic truth.

In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.

Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy.

Poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.

Say "Yes" to the seedlings and a giant forest cleaves the sky. Say "Yes" to the universe and the planets become your neighbors. Say "Yes" to dreams of love and freedom. It is the password to utopia.

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers.

The replacement of independent bookstores by firms such as Barnes & Noble, Waterstones or Borders superficially provided a wide range of reading, but their policies further limited choice.

Put off the fire of pride and save your life from burning with flames of failure. Pride is the reason why many dreams only survive as ashes today. Learn the lesson

You always were such a worrier. It was as if you thought your worrying was all that held the world together, and if you stopped for a split second the whole thing would just fly apart.

If you want what NORMAL people have, do what normal people DO. If you want what FEW people have, do what few people DO.

Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.

Gender reassignment is an exorcism of the mother

To play Swedish folk music is a lifetime achievement, but I'm well on my way.

We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies

Opportunity does not knock. You have to find it