Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. (G.K. Chesterton)

The best index to a person's character is:

a) how he treats people who can't do him any good.

b) how he treats people who can't fight back. (Abigail Van Buren)

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart, and his friends can only read the title. (Virgina Woolf)

Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose. (Evan Esar, 1899-1995)

Our original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all . . . rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather. (Frederick Buechner)

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way. (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Faith given back to us after a night of doubt is a stronger thing, and far more valuable to us than faith that has never been tested. (Elizabeth Goudge)   

If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.  ~Vincent Van Gogh

I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes.  What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself.  To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.~Oscar Levant, 1906-1972

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. ~Michaelangelo

To my embarrassment I was born in bed with a lady.~Wilson Mizner, 1876-1933

A friendship that can be ended didn't ever

start. 

• Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Oeuvres poétiques