Charles Dickens

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys. Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at Grandma’s house. And a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both. He was still the guy who’d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger-side door.

Insight emerges out of silence.

The universe, at any given point, in any given time, is expanding indefinitely in all directions. So trust me when I say, ‘you are the center of mine.’

Sometimes you have to make the right decision, and sometimes you have to make the decision right.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

I have 100 percent Bronx pride like it’s a country like I AM the Bronx.

Anything is better than lies and deceit!

Boredom: the desire for desires.

The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

Love is not the absence of hate; hate will always exist. Love is holding our head high and forever moving forward with kindness and compassion in spite of what hate may bring, because no amount of darkness can drown out our light if our light has been lit within.

I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.