The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.

A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.

There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.

By the time was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing. There are no plans to replace it, since it was never needed in the first place. I expect every installation has its own pet software which is analogous to the above.

I ran up the door, closed the stairs, said my pajamas, put on my prayers, turned off the bed, jumped in my light, all because you kissed me goodnight.

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them - the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas. -Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship, 1951 We preach Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. ... motto of the Dohnavur Fellowship January 19, 1999 Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095 No man can look with undivided vision at God and at the world of reality so long as God and the world are torn asunder. Try as he may, he can only let his eyes wander distractedly from one to the other. But there is a place at which God and the cosmic reality are reconciled, a place at which God and man have become one. That and that alone is what enables man to set his eyes upon God and the world at the same time. This place does not lie somewhere out beyond reality in the realm of ideas. It lies in the midst of history as a divine miracle. It lies in Jesus Christ, the reconciler of the world.

Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is really for? Is it to be a burden to the animal which wears it? It is just the opposite: it is to make its burden light. Attached to the oxen in any other way than by a yoke, the plow would be intolerable; worked by means of a yoke, it is light. A yoke is not an instrument of torture; it is an instrument of mercy. It is not a malicious contrivance for making work hard; it is a gentle device to make hard labor light. [Christ] knew the difference between a smooth yoke and a rough one, a bad fit and a good one... The rough yoke galled, and the burden was heavy; the smooth yoke caused no pain, and the load was lightly drawn. The badly fitted harness was a misery; the well fitted collar was "easy". And what was the "burden"? It was not some special burden laid upon the Christian, some unique infliction that they alone must bear. It was what all men bear: it was simply life, human life itself, the general burden of life which all must carry with them from the cradle to the grave. Christ saw that men took life painfully. To some it was a weariness, to others failure, to many a tragedy, to all a struggle and a pain. How to carry this burden of life had been the whole world's problem. And here is Christ's solution: "Carry it as I do. Take life as I take it. Look at it from my point of view. Interpret it upon my principles. Take my yoke and learn of me, and you will find it easy. For my yoke is easy, sits right upon the shoulders, and therefore my burden is light.".

The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme! The young men's vision, and the old men's dream.

Just as every conviction begins as a whim so does every emancipator serve his apprenticeship as a crank. A fanatic is a great leader who is just entering the room.

Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

Results are what you expect, and consequences are what you get.

Men grow old, pearls grow yellow, there is no cure for it. -Chinese proverb.

Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight; a home, a teacher, a companion.

'T were all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it. -All 's Well that Ends Well. Act i. Sc. 1.

Implicit in the activist conception of government is the assumption that you can take the good things in a complex system for granted, and just improve the things that are not so good. What is lacking in this conception is any sense that a society, an institution, or even a single human being, is an intricate system of fragile inter-relationships, whose complexities are little understood and easily destabilized.

His face puckered up like he had eaten a lemon.

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

Ah, March! we know thou art Kind-hearted, spite of ugly looks and threats, And, out of sight, art nursing April's violets!