If all were gentle and contented as sheep, all would be as feeble and helpless.
—John Lancaster Spalding (American Catholic Clergyman)
I don’t know that I’m making up for anything. Like everything in life, I just had to decide what to do with what was given.
—Stephenie Meyer (American Novelist)
He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)
Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them.
—Suzanne Curchod (French-Swiss Salonist, Writer)
If you give what can be taken, you are not really giving. Take what you are given, not what you want to be given. Give what cannot be taken.
—Idries Shah (Indian-born Sufi Author)
Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit.
—Alexandre Dumas pere (French Novelist, Playwright)
Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.
—Dorothy Day (American Journalist Reformer)
Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth we have spoken it.
—Alfred Whitney Griswold (American Historian)
He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Poet, Philosopher)
What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?
—Benjamin Spock (American Pediatrician)