Our culture is ill-equipped to assert the bourgeois values which would be the salvation of the under-class, because we have lost those values ourselves.
—Norman Podhoretz (American Political Activist)
Holding on to conditional beliefs about how people should behave toward you because of all you do for them will only set you up to feel disappointment, anger, and resentment to people in particular as well as disillusionment about others in general.
—Harriet B. Braiker (American Psychologist)
Listening to someone talk isn’t at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape.
—Oriana Fallaci (Italian Journalist)
Even the worst artist that ever was, even a one-eyed mental deficient with the shakes in both hands who sets out to paint the chicken-house, can enjoy the first stroke. Can think, By God, look what I’ve done. A miracle. … Must be one of the keenest pleasures open to mankind. It’s certainly the greatest an artist can have. It’s also the only one. And it doesn’t last long, usually about five minutes.
—Joyce Cary (English Novelist)
Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.
—Angela Davis (American Political Activist)
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
—Joseph Heller (American Novelist)
The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.
—Wilkie Collins (English Novelist, Playwright)
Creative people who can’t help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane.
—R. D. Laing (British Psychiatrist)
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
—Jean Rhys (British Novelist)
When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.
—Nora Ephron (American Filmmaker)
Satiety is a mongrel that barks at the heels of plenty.
—Minna Antrim (American Writer, Epigrammist)
By doing good deeds all the time, the mind gets purified. Such a pure mind devoid of any bad thoughts is like a temple in itself.
—Subhashita Manjari (Sanskrit Anthology of Proverbs)