Good Heart

If a good face is a letter of recommendation, a good heart is a letter of credit.

--Bulwer Lytton

Real Generosity

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

--Albert Camus

Never Alone

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

--Rachel Carlson

When It Is Real

Memory, when it is real, can well take the place of that jumble of conflicting impressions we call the present.

--Scott Spencer

Santa Ana

It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination....Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability.

--Joan Didion

Fear Uniformity

I fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you manufacture gold.

--John Ruskin

Time to Relax

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.

--Sydney J. Harris

All Cuckoos

We Americans are all cuckoos. We make our homes in the nests of other birds.

--Oliver Wendell Holmes

No Sentiment

Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.

--Norman Mailer

Other People

Other people, in fact--if you keep the numbers small--are not always hell.

--Richard Ford

Mere Habit

The mere habit of learning to love is the thing.

--Jane Austen

The Damage of Haste

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste.

--Theodore Roethke

First on the Dance Floor

When Clinton chose Gore as his running mate, I was on the moon. You see, I never found Gore to be the stiff, stuffy, robotic doofus that he was supposed to be. Okay, he was a bit shy and awkward, and kind of a nerd, but I never figured Lincoln or FDR to be the first on the dance floor, either.

--Melissa McEwan

By Degrees

What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

--William Shakespeare (Othello)

Illusions

The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

--George Bernard Shaw

Majority Drools

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

--Mark Twain

As Settled

So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

--Marcus Tullius Cicero

All Healing

All healing requires a movement into soul, which will be felt as outside the familiar structures of serious life.

--Thomas Moore

More Beautiful

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.

--Frank Lloyd Wright

Certain

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

--Francis Bacon

Moonlit

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

--William James

Not Necessary

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

--Albert Einstein