"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.

The First Lady is an unpaid public servant elected by one person --- her husband.

When I appear in public, people expect me to neigh, grind my teeth paw the ground and swish my tail --- none of which is easy.

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.

A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.

Some think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go.

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.

"I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!"

"If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered ...Read more

"The hatred you're carrying is a live coal in your heart -- far more damaging to yourself than to them."

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

Ritual is the way you carry the presence of the sacred. Ritual is the spark that must not go out.

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only for wallowing in.

Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry, "More light." Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we...Read more

The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces.

Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

The only aspect of our travels that is interesting to others is disaster.

Once a woman has forgiven a man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.