Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. But to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one’s own life.
—Alicia Markova (English Ballerina)
Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth!
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)
Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational—but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
—Judith Viorst (American Author)
To despise riches, may, indeed, be philosophic, but to dispense them worthily, must surely be more beneficial to mankind.
—Frances Burney (English Satirical Novelist)
I have always tried to be true to myself, to pick those battles I felt were important. My ultimate responsibility is to myself. I could never be anything else.
—Arthur Ashe (American Tennis Player)
The fairest flower in the garden of creation is a young mind, offering and unfolding itself to the influence of divine wisdom, as the heliotrope turns its sweet blossoms to the sun.
—James Edward Smith (English Botanist)
By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
—Charles Wadsworth (American Pianist)
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
—Hugh Walpole (English Novelist)
Optimism is the content of small men in high places.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)
Only when we have something to value, will we have something to evaluate. We cannot value something that we cannot share, exchange and examine.
—Lee Shulman (American Educational Psychologist)
Men are more inclined to ask curious questions, than to obtain necessary instruction.
—Pasquier Quesnel (French Theologian)