Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.

After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.

When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.

Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you.

And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.

I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

Showing charity towards others is the biggest lesson we canteach our children to guide them in their future on this planet.

Sometimes in this life, only one or two opportunities are put before us and we must seize them no matter the risk.

A slave believes that the law should define the scope of liberty. A free person believes that liberty should define the scope of the law.

Note the three most important Cabinet positions. Rice said that it was better to find the weapons of mass destruction than to see a mushroom cloud.

We have to stop the propaganda, the shameful propaganda used by Kremlin to rehabilitate these old types.

Reputation is favorable notoriety as distinguished from fame, which is permanent approval of great deeds and noble thoughts by the best intelligence of mankind.

Equality means equality for all - no exceptions, no 'yes, buts', no asterisked footnotes imposing limits.

A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumnity, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principal has taken full effect on this state favorite.

I always had really long swimmer's arms. The last to totally go is always my thighs and butt, but my old body is there somewhere.

Saints are what they are not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everyone else.