Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.
—Christopher Fry (English Poet, Playwright)
Sorrow itself is not so hard to bear as the thought of sorrow coming. Airy ghosts that work no harm do terrify us more than men in steel with bloody purposes.
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (American Writer)
A computer will do what you tell it to do, but that may be much different from what you had in mind.
—Joseph Weizenbaum (American Computer Scientist)
I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Austrian Composer)
Peace comes from feelings of satisfaction when working with joy, living with hope, loving with abandonment.
—Arnold Hutschnecker (American Psychiatrist)
Success is the child of audacity.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)
I maintain that nothing useful and lasting can emerge from violence.
—Shirin Ebadi (Iranian Human Rights Activist)
Hold your children with your heart but teach them with your hands.
—Russian Proverb
Committee—a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.
—Milton Berle (American Entertainer)
Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.
—John Hersey (American Novelist, Journalist)
There is a certain state of health that does not allow us to understand everything; and perhaps illness shuts us off from certain truths; but health shuts us off just as effectively from others.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)
It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)
True wisdom comes from the overcoming of suffering and sin. All true wisdom is therefore touched with sadness.
—Whittaker Chambers (American Journalist)
The question of originality, if it arises at all, can never be peripheral: originality is more than a requirement in good poetry, it is a description of it.
—Clive James (Australian Writer, Broadcaster, TV Critic)
Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.
—Naomi Wolf (American Feminist Writer)