Victor Hugo

"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor." - Victor Hugo

Niels Bohr

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr

Tennessee Williams

"I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really." - Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

E. M. Forster

"Let yourself go. Pull out from the depth those thoughts that you do not understand and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them." - E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

John Andrew Holmes

"Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both." - John Andrew Holmes

Unknown

"A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn't." - Unknown

Charles Baudelaire, poetry

Excerpt of Charles Baudelaire's poem, "Be Drunken"

'It is the hour to be drunken
Be drunken if you would not be the
martyred slaves of Time.
Be drunken Continually, with wine, with
poetry or with virtue, as you please.'

- Charles Baudelaire (French Poet), "Be Drunken"

Complete poem, after the Jump:

Umberto Eco

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." - Umberto Eco

Pär Lagerkvist

"One for whom the pebble has value must be surrounded by treasures wherever he goes." - Pär Lagerkvist

Peter De Vries

"It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us." - Peter De Vries

Hubert H. Humphrey

"In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be." - Hubert H. Humphrey

Robert Pirsig

"There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good." - Robert Pirsig

Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009), television

"I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language!

But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!"

- Brother Cavil, Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009)

George Orwell

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it." - George Orwell

Voltaire

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire

Mark Twain

"Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven." - Mark Twain

Oliver Wendell Holmes

"It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Rita Mae Brown

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you." - Rita Mae Brown (American Writer)

G. K. Chesterton

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." - G. K. Chesterton

Ben Hecht

"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." - Ben Hecht

P. J. O'Rourke

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." - P. J. O'Rourke

George Orwell

"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." - George Orwell

Scott Adams

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." - Scott Adams

Elie Wiesel

"There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them." - Elie Wiesel

Robert H. Schuller

"Tough times never last, but tough people do." - Robert H. Schuller