The Bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. William Blake.  

My crown is in my heart, not in my head, Nor decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen; my crown is called contentment; A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy William Shakespeare

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair. Miguel Cervantes

How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved!

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity. Sigmund Freud

…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. -James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

"She had to make a supernatural effort not to die when a startingly regulated cyclonic power lifted her up by the waist and despoiled her of her intimacy with three slashes of its claws and quartered her like a little bird. She managed to thank God for having been born before she lost herself in the inconceivable pleasure of that unbearable pain…" One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez .’

I felt proud of myself. I had stolen the honey of a spasm without impairing the morals of a minor. Absolutely no harm done. The conjurer had poured milk, molasses, foaming champagne into a young lady’s new white purse; and lo, the purse was intact.’  Nabokov.

First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, "I believe," three times. Ovid.

"Love is full of anxious fears.  "An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex. "
"Chastity: the most unnatural of the sexual perversions. "
"Bed, as the Italian proverb succinctly puts it, ‘is the poor man’s Opera."
"Several excuses are always less convincing than one."  

                                                                          Aldous Huxley

 
"This is the true measure of love: When we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us" 

" I love those who yearn for the impossible." 

"Nothing is worth more than this day." Goethe

"Who loves not wine, women and song, Remains a fool his whole life long"
"Peace if possible, truth at all costs."
"Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God"
"If you are not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there"  Luther

"He who doesn’t lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose" Lessing

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." Arendt

"Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand"  Marx

"Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness," Andre Gide.

"A sense of wonder so indestructable it lasts a lifetime as an antidote against boredom and disenchantment. "Unattributed

"A mind always hopeful, confident, courageous, and determined on its set purpose, and keeping itself to that purpose, attracts to itself out of the elements things and powers favourable to that purpose. " Ralph Waldo Trine

"People bring to what they see and feel, the inner weather of their souls and complexion of their minds." Han Suyin.

"Stand in awe and sin not: Commune with your own heart, and in your chamber, be still." Psalm 3 v. 4.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein.

"When you change the way you look at a thing, the thing itself changes…By mastering feelings, she had come to understand the meaning of discipline and its reward: freedom and power. " May Sarton.

"There was never a good war, or a bad peace." Benjamin Franklin

"My advice to you is to get married. If you find a good wife, you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher." Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.)

One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work. Voltaire

I took a speed reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. Woody Allen

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. Groucho Marx

The really cultured person reads the newest books in science and the oldest in literature. Anon

The true University of these days is a collection of books. Thomas Carlyle

"A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction"  Oscar Wilde

 
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. W. H. Auden

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. Santayana

No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy. F. Scott Fitzgerald

"There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees."

"The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
The man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
The thing I fear most is fear. (So much for FDR)
The honor of the conquest is rated by the difficulty"

                                                                                                                         Michel Eyquem De Montaigne 

She has lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech. Shaw, George Bernard

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression. 

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside.

                                                                                                              Samuel Johnson 

 They say that love is always blind and that explains so much, young lovers always seem so prone to use their sense of touch. Charles Ghigna

"The louder he talked about honor,* the quicker we counted our spoons." Emerson.

"a little science estranges man from God; a lot of science brings him back." Sir Francis Bacon

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."   Zola 

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