Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
—Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Japanese Novelist)
There is scarcely anything more harmless than political or party malice. It is best to leave it to itself. Opposition and contradiction are the only means of giving it life or duration.
—John Witherspoon (American Clergyman)
Billions are wasted on ineffective philanthropy. Philanthropy is decades behind business in applying rigorous thinking to the use of money.
—Michael Porter (American Management Theorist)
When there is no peril in the fight, there is no glory in the triumph.
—Al Alvarez (English Critic, Poet, Novelist)
The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it’s a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.
—Jonathan Lethem (American Novelist, Essayist)
The word career is a divisive word. It’s a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life.
—Grace Paley (American Author)
The first duty of a government is to give education to the people
—Simon Bolivar (Venezuelan Patriot)
The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.
—Elizabeth Gilbert (American Novelist)
There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy.
—Edwin Paxton Hood (English Nonconformist Divine)
Nothing is such an obstacle to the production of excellence as the power of producing what is good with ease and rapidity.
—John Aikin (British Educator)
The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, to drink, and sleep; to be exposed to darkness and the light; to pace around in the mill of habit, and turn thought into an instrument of trade-this is not life. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vitality to the mechanism of existence.
—James Martineau (English Unitarian Theologian)
I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.
—Sylvester Stallone (American Actor)
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.
—Ivy Baker Priest (American Politician)