Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great, you can be that generation - Nelson Mandela

The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die. - Susanna Kearsley, Mariana

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly. - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all. - William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been straining from the beginning? ...Very far from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish. - Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough! - Karl Marx

Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world. - Ramana Maharshi

All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge. - Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo's Notebooks

I am a person who is unhappy with things as they stand. We cannot accept the world as it is. Each day we should wake up foaming at the mouth because of the injustice of things. - Hugo Claus

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love; a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end. - Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals

Let others lead small lives, but not you.. Let others argue over small things, but not you.. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you.. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you. - Jim Rohn

A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims--these are lucky eventualites but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.And we certainly wouldn't write about it. - Jeffrey Eugenides, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro

A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.…We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick. - Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

Change course, but don’t give up. - Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back. - Dorothy Parker

The world is a stage and the play is badly cast. - Oscar Wilde

In my life so far, I have discovered that there are really only two kinds of people: those who are for you, and those who are against you. Learn to recognize them, for they are often and easily mistaken for each other. - Lemmy Kilmister

Desire is the kind of thing thateats youandleaves you starving. - Nayyirah Waheed

To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone. - Suzanne Gordon