All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them. The only books I have in my library are those that other folks have lent me.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)
Prayer is the little implement through which men reach; where presence is denied them.
—Emily Dickinson (American Poet)
The difference between one man and another is not mere ability … it is energy.
—Thomas Arnold (English Educationalist)
Of all God’s gifts to the sighted man, color is holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)
There is but one way to tranquillity of mind and happiness; let this, therefore, be always ready at hand with thee, both when thou wakest early in the morning, and all the day long, and when thou goest late to sleep, to account no external things thine own, but commit all these to God.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)
Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward.
—William Butler Yeats (Irish Poet)
Literature is a great staff, but a sorry crutch.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)
Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio, or looked at a TV. They had loneliness and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would mark.
—Carl Sandburg (American Poet, Historian)
It matters not how long you live, but how well.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)
Nothing is more dreadful than a cold, unimpassioned indulgence. And love infallibly becomes cold and unimpassioned when it is too lightly made.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)
If only people thought a little more about it, they would see that life is not worrying about so much.
—Mikhail Lermontov (Russian Novelist, Poet)
There’s no voiceless, there’s only the deliberately silenced or the purposely unheard.
—Arundhati Roy (Indian Novelist, Activist)
All oppression creates a state of war; this is no exception.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)
Gratitude is the memory of the heart; therefore forget not to say often, I have all I have ever enjoyed.
—Lydia Maria Child (American Abolitionist)