I live for coincidences. They briefly give to me the illusion or the hope that there's a pattern to my life, and if there's a pattern, then maybe I'm moving toward some kind of destiny where it's all explained.
Jonathan Ames
You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes, make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success - on the far side of failure.
Thomas J. Watson
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anaïs Nin
The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.
Quentin Crisp
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde
There is no short cut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation - veneer isn't worth anything.
George Washington Carver
There are so many awful things in this world, but I wanted readers to share with me the small, beautiful, enjoyable things. Things like cute clothes, beautiful art and pretty flowers; items that are overflowing with beauty. If you just become obsessed with your own problems, you miss these things. When you discover them, you become happy.
Novala Takemoto
There was a manifesto in the late '60s/early '70s, and it basically laid out what 'black art' was and that it should embrace black history and black culture. There were all these rules - I was shocked, when I found it in a book, that it even existed, that it would demarcate these artists.
Kara Walker
If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers...
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Nelson Mandela
I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.
William Morris